Celebrity

Angelina Jolie Launches Center for Women, Peace and Security in London

The United Nations special envoy announced the creation of the Centre on Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics Tuesday

Published on February 10, 2015 11:20 AM

Angelina Jolie expanded on her humanitarian efforts Tuesday in London, announcing the creation of the Centre on Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics.

Jolie, 39, a special envoy of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, attended the event alongside William Hague, Britain’s First Secretary of State and leader of the House of Commons, PEOPLE confirms.

The new center will aim to educate students about the participation of women in “conflict-related processes” and “on enhancing accountability and ending impunity for rape and sexual violence in war,” according to a press release from the renowned London School of Economics.

“I am excited at the thought of all the students in years to come who will study in this new Centre,” Jolie said in a statement. “There is no stable future for a world in which crimes committed against women go unpunished. We need the next generation of educated youth with inquisitive minds and fresh energy, who are willing not only to sit in the classroom but to go out into the field and the courtrooms and to make a decisive difference.”

The new center will support the goals of the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI), which Jolie and Hague co-founded in 2012. Next year, the newly announced center will begin offering post-graduate degrees. The center is also supported by former U.S. Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.

Tuesday’s announcement comes just two weeks after Jolie published an op-ed in The New York Times regarding her recent visits to camps for Syrian and Iraqi refugees.

“I have visited Iraq five times since 2007, and I have seen nothing like the suffering I’m witnessing now,” wrote the mother of six. “Nothing prepares you for the reality of so much individual human misery: for the stories of suffering and death, and the gaze of hungry, traumatized children.”