Angelina Jolie and Amnesty International collaborate on children's book

Hollywood A-lister Angelina Jolie and Amnesty International are announcing at today’s (2nd April) Bologna Children’s Book Fair that they will collaborate on a children’s book with themes based around the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

The project was started, Jolie and Amnesty said, of a “shared concern that children and adults are often unaware of children’s human rights”.

The project will be “informed by children” and based around work done by the Open University Children’s Research Centre in which children are consulted on what rights mean to them, which rights they think are most important and what they would like to see in the book.

The rights outlined in the UNCRC will be drawn by different illustrators from around the world alongside short stories which "bring to life the rights and how children have stood up for them, inspired by real-life examples".

The stories will be curated by Jolie, Amnesty and Geraldine Van Bueren QC, one of the original drafters of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Jolie will also write the foreword.

Curtis Brown agent Stephanie Thwaites is representing the project.

Amnesty secretary general Kumi Naidoo said: “Children cannot defend themselves and others if they do not even know that they have rights, let alone what those rights are. We hope this beautiful book will empower all children to know and understand their rights, as well as where they can go for help.”

Jolie has been working on humanitarian issues with the UN since 2001 and was named special envoy to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in 2012.