Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was deeply saddened last week to learn of the murders of six World Vision staff in their offices in Mansehra in Pakistan. I understand that the staff were gathered together by militants and dragged off one by one to a separate room, where they were shot. It is a tragedy when aid workers are killed in the line of duty. In January we saw more than 100 workers killed in the Haiti earthquake. But it is truly shocking when aid workers themselves become the target of violence. I understand that World Vision has now suspended its operations in Pakistan indefinitely, due to its inability to guarantee the safety of its staff. Reverend Tim Costello, the Chief Executive of World Vision, noted:

The tragedy is in the last 10 to 15 years, aid workers have become targets, and that wasn’t the case before …

UN Security Council Resolution 1502 of 2003, which was unanimously adopted following the terrorist bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad on 19 August 2003, noted longstanding humanitarian law prohibiting attacks on humanitarian workers. The Security Council strongly condemned all forms of violence against humanitarian workers as war crimes and called on states to ensure that such crimes do not go unpunished.

I trust the Pakistani law enforcement authorities are doing all they can to find and punish the perpetrators of last week’s terrible crimes in Pakistan. I stand with Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and, I am sure, with all Australian parliamentarians in extending sympathy and condolences to the families of those killed, as well as to their friends and colleagues in World Vision International and World Vision Australia.