Angelina – and Shiloh! – Bond with a 12-Year-Old Refugee in Lebanon

It’s a special mother-daughter trip for Angelina Jolie Pitt and 9-year-old Shiloh. The mom of six brought her daughter to Lebanon on Friday to spend time with a 12-year-old Syrian girl named Hala, whom Angelina met a year ago during a trip for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

“Shiloh is very aware that I hold refugee families in high regard and has been asking to come on missions and meet them for many years,” Jolie Pitt tells PEOPLE. “She had heard about Hala since my last visit to Lebanon, and has been wanting to meet her and her brothers and sisters.”

She continues, “It was wonderful that they were able to meet, play together, and make friends. So many refugees are children. I’ve often heard them say that the most painful thing is not that they have lost their homes – it is that they have lost their friends.”

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