Angelina Jolie attends the 2017 United Nations Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial Conference in Vancouver, Canada. Nov. 15, 2017. (Xinhua/Liang Sen)

VANCOUVER, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- Angelina Jolie urged military leaders and peacekeepers on Wednesday to step up efforts to protect women and girls from sexual violence around the world.

The Hollywood star is also a special envoy to the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Refugees and co-founder of the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative. She was in Vancouver addressing a UN peacekeeping conference that brought together nearly 60 defense ministers and hundreds of delegates.

"Sexual violence continues to be employed as a tactic of war in 19 countries," Jolie said in her keynote address. "It includes mass rape, gang rape, sexual slavery and rape as a form of torture, ethnic cleansing and terrorism."

She said women and children continue to represent the largest number of casualties of war. "There is nothing worse than when someone in uniform is harming the very civilians they are expected to protect."

Jolie said decades of protocols, promises and resolutions from the UN, the International Criminal Court and the UN Security Council have not done enough to protect women and children from sexual violence in war.

"We have to ask, how is it (that) after all these years, all these laws, all these resolutions and all the horrors that have been endured, women still have to ask for this most basic of all entitlements - the right to a life free from violence?"

She said sexual violence is rampant in every industry and every corner of the world, and is a main reason so many women remain in subordinate and vulnerable positions.

"No longer should sexual violence be treated as a lesser crime amid conflict, and no longer should the international community believe that nothing can be done about sexual crimes," Jolie said.

Earlier in the day, Canada, Britain and Bangladesh announced a senior military chiefs' network, promising to work with top military officials to increase the number of women in militaries.

Jolie applauded the move and said much more needs to be done to boost gender and sexual violence training and more women should be deployed as peacekeepers and gender advisors.

"It is hard, yes, but it is not impossible," she said. "We have the laws, the institutions, the expertise in gathering evidence. We are able to identify perpetrators in those conflicts. What is missing is the political will."