The Academy Award-winning megastar has worked with UNCHR for more than 20 years, serving as special envoy since 2012. That position took her to countries including Lebanon, Yemen and Burkina Faso to meet displaced people and draw attention to some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. On her Instagram account — which has more than 14 million followers — she posts about Syrian refugees and people displaced by the war in Ukraine.
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi praised Jolie as an “important humanitarian partner” for the agency.
“We are grateful for her decades of service, her commitment, and the difference she has made for refugees and people forced to flee,” he said in the statement Friday. “After a long and successful time with UNHCR, I appreciate her desire to shift her engagement and support her decision.”
Jolie, according to the announcement, intends to focus on a wider range of humanitarian issues, although she added, “I will continue to do everything in my power in the years to come to support refugees and other displaced people.”
In recent years, Jolie has increasingly voiced criticism of international institutions and the approach of world leaders to conflict and humanitarian crises.
During a visit last year to the Goudebou refugee camp in Burkina Faso, which hosts refugees from the armed conflict in the north of Mali, Jolie blasted the failure of global leaders to adequately help the more than 82 million forcibly displaced people in the world at that time.
“The way we as an international community try to address conflict and insecurity is broken,” she said. “It is erratic, it is unequal, it is built on inherited privilege, it is subject to the whim of political leaders, and it is geared towards the interests of powerful countries, including my own, at the expense of others.”
Jolie lamented the relative apathy of world leaders for “crimes committed against the women and children of Burkina Faso, or Yemen, or Myanmar, or Ethiopia, for example.”
She has also appeared to grow increasingly disillusioned with the United Nations, where permanent members of the powerful Security Council — the United States, Britain, Russia, China and France — exert tremendous sway and have the power to block action on human rights abuses.
“Because of the way the U.N. was set up, it is tipped towards the interests and voice of powerful nations at the expense of those people suffering the most from conflict and persecution whose rights and lives are not treated equally,” Jolie wrote in an opinion piece for TIME in June. “For decades, the main focus has been the work of international organizations. There’s been not enough attention on listening to local groups and volunteers, and strengthening their efforts.”
In a sign that Jolie was moving away from her work with the United Nations, the actress made a surprise trip to Ukraine in April to meet with displaced people and volunteers helping them — but in her personal capacity, not through UNHCR.
Jolie had contemplated parting ways with UNHCR for “a while” before Friday’s announcement, according to a person close to the actress, who answered questions on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about the situation.
“Basically, she will be more effective as an outsider,” the person said. “She always has been like that and more with the people than the system.”
Jolie has not shared any details yet about the causes and organizations to which she intends to shift her focus.
