Angelina Jolie has shared an emotional reflection on Cambodia, marking one year since violence erupted along the country’s border with Thailand and reaffirming the deep roots she and her family have planted there. The actress and humanitarian, 51, turned to Instagram on Friday, July 24, to describe the toll the fighting has taken on a region she now calls home, and to voice her enduring bond with a place central to her family’s story.
The conflict, she said, upended the “safety and stability” of countless people in the area. A year on, the crisis has not eased. Jolie wrote that nearly 30,000 people remain internally displaced and unable to return to their homes, an accounting that anchored a post as much about loss as about resilience.
A Family Rooted in Cambodia
Jolie’s connection to Cambodia stretches back more than two decades. She became the mother of her son Maddox, now 24, through adoption from a Battambang orphanage in 2002, and in the years since she has built a life and a body of humanitarian work in the country. In her Instagram post, she described Cambodia as holding special meaning for her family — her son’s birthplace and the family’s home, where a fully locally led team has spent more than 20 years on conservation and community development.
That work flows through the Maddox Foundation, which operates alongside rural communities in the Samlout region. The foundation’s efforts include removing landmines, protecting the Samlout Forest through environmental programs, building educational facilities, providing healthcare services, and promoting farming practices that can be sustained over time. Jolie noted that the foundation’s base sits near where the recent fighting took place, describing how she has grown close to her neighbors and the foundation team while working to clear mines and develop the land together.
The violence forced the foundation to evacuate its staff from the region last year, Jolie revealed. Those workers, she said, are now back on the ground. She wrote that while she is grateful the team has resumed its work protecting the land and supporting the community’s health and livelihoods, her heart remains with everyone still waiting to come home. She closed the post with a message of return written in Cambodian.
A Long-Planned Move Abroad
The reflection arrives at a pivotal moment in Jolie’s personal life. In 2024, she said she intended to leave Los Angeles for Cambodia once her youngest children, twins Knox and Vivienne, reached 18, a milestone the pair hit earlier this month. Jolie said she was in Los Angeles only because of divorce requirements, and that once her children turned 18, she would be able to leave.
She has framed the next chapter around movement between Cambodia and her scattered family. After leaving Los Angeles, she said, she planned to spend significant time in the country while visiting relatives wherever they might be in the world. Four of her six children — Maddox, Vivienne, Shiloh, 20, and Zahara, 21 — have chosen to drop Pitt’s surname while keeping Jolie in their names.
Cambodia has also shaped Jolie’s creative work. Speaking at the Telluride Film Festival on September 3, 2017, she discussed “First They Killed My Father,” her film about the country, which was set for release in select theaters and on Netflix on September 15. Sitting alongside her was Loung Ung, a Cambodian refugee whose memoir formed the basis for the movie and who has lived in America since 1980. Ung recounted fleeing Phnom Penh, spending six months in a refugee camp in Thailand and eventually being resettled in Burlington, Vermont, before later moving to Cleveland. She made her first trip back in 1995, noting the United States and Cambodia did not have a diplomatic relationship until 1993, and said she has returned more than 35 times since.
A History of Humanitarian Work in the Region
Jolie’s advocacy in Southeast Asia predates her foundation’s current mission. As a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, she visited the Ban Mai Nai Soi camp in northern Thailand in early 2009, spending a day listening to refugees who had spent decades confined to closed camps after fleeing Myanmar. On February 5, 2009, she urged Thai authorities to grant increased mobility to the many thousands confined to the camps, unable to leave, work, or access higher education.
The scale then was stark. Ban Mai Nai Soi alone held 18,111 mainly Karenni refugees, part of approximately 111,000 registered refugees living in nine camps situated along the border between Thailand and Myanmar. Local authorities had yet to process about 5,000 people who fled to Mae Hong Son province between 2006 and 2007, the last stretch of significant fighting in Kayah State across the border. Throughout the prior year, refugees had continued to trickle in, mostly fleeing forced labor and human rights abuses. Jolie also raised the plight of Rohingya boat people, 78 of whom the refugee agency had recently gained access to in detention centers, urging that Thailand extend the same hospitality it had long shown other refugees.
Nearly two decades later, that concern for people displaced by conflict runs through her latest message. As her foundation’s staff resume their work in Samlout, Jolie’s post makes clear that the crisis remains far from resolved for the tens of thousands still unable to go home.