As thousands of desperate people stream into Europe seeking refuge, a distinction must be made between those fleeing extreme poverty and those fleeing war, actress and human rights activist Angelina Jolie wrote in an editorial on Monday.

Refugees fleeing conflict face an immediate need to be saved from persecution and danger, and effective screening could give them needed protection, wrote the actress, a special envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, with Arminka Helic, a former Bosnian refugee and member of Britain's upper house of parliament.

Hundreds of thousands of people have made risky journeys recently to flee wars in the Middle East, particularly the four-year-old civil war in Syria, as well as conflict and poverty in Africa and Asia, and there is no consensus among European nations on how to cope with the influx.

"We should be conscious of the distinction between economic migrants, who are trying to escape extreme poverty, and refugees who are fleeing an immediate threat to their lives," Jolie and Helic wrote in the editorial published in The Times in London.

In particular, they wrote, "Syrians are fleeing barrel bombs, chemical weapons, rape and massacres."

The problem will continue until the international community helps to find a diplomatic end to the conflict in Syria, they said.

"We cannot donate our way out of the crisis, we cannot solve it simply by taking in refugees," they wrote.

Criticizing a global "systematic failure to resolve conflicts, they wrote: "Nothing tells us more about the state of the world than the movement of people across borders."

Germany, which expects to receive 800,000 refugees and migrants this year, and Austria opened their borders in recent days to thousands of mostly Syrian refugees who had been stranded in Hungary.

Pope Francis on Sunday called on every Catholic parish and religious community in Europe to take in at least one refugee family, and musician and Band Aid founder Bob Geldof made a highly publicised offer to shelter four refugee families in his homes in Britain.

By Ellen Wulfhorst, Editing by Ros Russell