Actress Jolie to speak at Vancouver summit

OTTAWA • Academy Awardwinning actress Angelina Jolie is expected to lend her star power to next week’s peacekeeping summit in Vancouver.

A draft program for the two-day meeting leaked to The Canadian Press says Jolie will deliver a keynote address at the event, appearing as a special envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and co-founder of the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative.

The topic of Jolie’s Nov. 15 address is not listed, but the Liberal government has pushed for the summit to include discussions about increasing gender equality in peacekeeping and ending sexual abuse by warring factions — and peacekeepers themselves.

After long ignoring the issue of sexual violence in war, the international community has in recent years stepped up its efforts to end rape and other sexual crimes in conflict zones and to hold perpetrators to account.

Jolie has been helping on that front; in June, she spoke at a training centre in Kenya with peacekeepers, police and civil society groups to talk about how to prevent sexual violence.

“This is not simply about law and human decency. It is about military effectiveness,” she said at the time.

“If civilians do not have confidence in you as peacekeepers, your mission will not succeed.”