Angelina Jolie has become a "better mother" thanks to Somali refugees.

The 36-year-old actress – who raises six children, Maddox, 10, Pax, seven, Zahara, six, Shiloh, five and three-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne with partner Brad Pitt – thanked the Switzerland-based Yemen Society for Humanitarian Solidarity for allowing her to spend time with the refugees and praised them for helping her become a good person and parent.

Speaking at the United Nations Refugee Agency Awards on Monday, where the Society won a prize for helping thousands of Somali Refugees and migrants who flee the war and famine ravished country to Yemen in smuggler's boats, she said: "I'm so grateful – I don't want to cry – to the refugee families that I have the honour and privilege to spend the last years with.