Isis: Angelina Jolie urges religious leaders to unite against Islamic State

Angelina Jolie has urged 24 religious leaders from around the world to unite against Isis.

Jolie met with 24 religious leaders at the Lancaster House in London with the collaboration of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.

The Maleficent actress met with religious leaders from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nepal, Iraq and South Sudan as well as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and former British Foreign Secretary, William Hague.

Highlighting the atrocities committed against women and the use of rape as a weapon of war, addressing the assembly the 39-year-old said: "We need a powerful moral force. An estimated 90% of all casualties are women and children and rape is a favoured military tactic we seem unable to prevent or punish."

"I recently returned from northern Iraq, where women and girls are systematically targeted by armed groups, including ISIS. The intensity and brutality of the sexual violence is terrifying. It is premeditated, organized, and brazen," she added.

Jolie called upon the religious leaders to help raise awareness of sexual violence and play a part in bringing an end to the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war uniting for the 'powerful moral force.'

"'This is violence that respects and spares no one, of any religion or ethnicity. It is fueled by impunity. It often involves surrounding villages, separating out and killing men, bussing out the girls to be sold into slavery and torture. . . For all our advances, the mass rape of women and children and men is still seldom punished, and still carries little or no risk to the perpetrators," she said.

"The tragedy is that this issue hardly features in discussions about our strategy towards defeating ISIL, ending conflict in Syria, and stabilising Iraq. Yet it is vital to our success; and so I ask your help in highlighting around the world the injustice and the urgency, the urgency of the situation,' Jolie explained in an emotive speech.

The meeting follows Jolie's trip to a Kurdish refugee camp in Dohuk, northern Iraq, in her role as special envoy of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Highlighting the plight of Yazidi and Syrian refugees, she urged world leaders to do more to bring the conflict in Syria and Iraq to an end.

During her trip to London, Jolie opened a centre at the London School of Economics in London, dedicated to bringing an end to war rape.

The Centre for Women, Peace and Security is founded to conduct research to prevent sexual violence against women during war.