International Humanitarian Assistance
Federation Chamber - GRIEVANCE DEBATE
29 July 2025
For better or for worse, the world is more interconnected today than ever before. At a time when the world is experiencing a series of parallel humanitarian crises of wrenching scale, Australians are directly exposed to more stories and images of human suffering via their phones and TV screens that perhaps ever before. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs' Global Humanitarian Overview 2025 has made it clear that we are witnessing 'entrenched and increasing violent conflicts and violations of international humanitarian law are devastating the lives of civilians, while the global climate crisis is wreaking havoc for millions of people'.
OCHA has said bluntly that international funding does not meet the scale of humanitarian need today and that humanitarians around the world are being forced to make 'harrowing decisions' about who they target for assistance, decisions about who to prioritise amongst the 300 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in crises in Sudan, the Congo, Tigray, Yemen, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Gaza, to name just a few of the most acute situations.
I want to thank Australians who have contacted me about the extraordinary human suffering that we are currently witnessing in Gaza. Over the last two years, I have repeatedly spoken out about this conflict and its humanitarian consequences in this chamber, and, while Australia is not a central player to events in the Middle East, we have used our voice to call for the protection of civilian life and compliance with international humanitarian law and provided significant additional humanitarian funding to support the innocent people caught up in this conflict.
We've consistently called for Israel to comply with the International Court of Justice's interim orders and allow unimpeded, consistent humanitarian access at scale, since the judgement was handed down. In recent weeks, the world has seen harrowing footage of unimaginable human suffering in Gaza—children starving, desperate parents, crowds of people risking their lives to access what little food is available. There can be no justification for this man-made humanitarian crisis.
Israel has a legal and moral obligation to ensure that innocent civilians in Gaza have access to food, water and medical assistance. This is not the UN's fault. It is not Hamas's fault. It is Israel's responsibility at international law, and it must discharge it. The Netanyahu government's model of drip-feeding of aid is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity. It's wrong, and it's had predictably disastrous consequences; indeed, consequences that the world had repeatedly warned the Netanyahu government would result from this approach. We should be clear that starvation and malnutrition cause stunting in children, and that will have generational impacts on regional stability and development.
Australia, along with 29 partner countries, has called on the Israeli government to lift restrictions on the flow of aid so that the UN and humanitarian NGOs can do their lifesaving work safely and effectively. An immediate permanent ceasefire is the best hope of both protecting innocent civilian life and bringing hostages home and easing the agony of their loved ones. Australia condemns the terror of Hamas, and we continue to call for the immediate release of remaining hostages.
Since 7 October 2023, Australia has committed humanitarian assistance to support civilians impacted by conflicts in the Middle East, totalling $154.5 million, with $110 million directed to assist civilians in Gaza and Lebanon who have been affected by the conflict. We have worked with partner organisations and countries to assist people in Gaza to deliver aid effectively. Humanitarian aid is essential for ensuring civilians can access essential supplies when caught in protracted conflict zones, and, to be effective, this aid must flow at scale and humanitarian workers must be able to deliver it safely and without hindrance. For nearly two years, Australia has joined international efforts to support humanitarian aid delivery and to facilitate a ceasefire because innocent lives must be safeguarded and every effort must be made to end the starvation and suffering in Gaza. The future peace and security of Israelis and Palestinians in the entire region demands it.
Unfortunately, while the world's attention is focused on the appalling humanitarian crisis in Gaza, it is far from the only acute humanitarian crisis unfolding today. In our own region, next month will mark the eighth anniversary of the Myanmar military's attack against the Rohingya and their exodus to Bangladesh. In May, more than 400 Rohingya refugees were lost at sea, in just two days, when two boats carrying them from this conflict in Myanmar and the world's largest refugee settlement in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, sank in the Bay of Bengal. Despite these desperate migrations away from the protracted eight-year humanitarian crisis in Myanmar and Bangladesh, scarce attention has been paid to the growing problem on our nightly TV news or social media feeds. This is despite worsening conditions for the people in Myanmar and more than one million Rohingya refugees living in refugee camps for nearly a decade.
In 2017, I travelled to the Rakhine province in north-west Myanmar to visit internally displaced people camps, where many Rohingya families were already sheltering from sectarian violence. In the capital, Sittwe, I met a 10-year-old Rohingya girl, whose first access to formal education was in an Australian funded school in the IDP camp supported by Save the Children. Having practised for the occasion, she proudly told me in English, 'School life is my best life.' It was hard to look her in the eyes without being brought to tears. Within a year, that girl and a million Rohingya like her were forced to flee dramatically escalated violence targeting the Rohingya in Rakhine across the border into Bangladesh. Today, more than half of the 1.1 million Rohingya in Cox's Bazar are children.
Disruptions in food rations and limited health care can push children into a 'spiralling cycle of disease and malnutrition', according to the Inter-Sector Coordination Group's 2025 assessment of the Rohingya refugee response in Bangladesh. These children face a constant threat of kidnapping and human trafficking on their journey to school. Many families don't take the risk. A generation of hungry and scared children is growing up into frustrated adults, cut off from economic opportunity. Fear and desperation today will lead to resentment and volatility tomorrow. It's a recipe for regional instability.
Despite its scale, the UNHCR has rightly said that the plight of the Rohingya in Bangladesh 'remains largely out of the international spotlight'. It has, however, remained a focus for the Australian government. The joint Myanmar-Rohingya crisis is our largest single humanitarian funding commitment, with our total support exceeding $1.26 billion since the crisis began, including a three-year program of up to $370 million starting next year. We're supporting the delivery of education, food, hygiene and health care not only because it is the right thing to do but also because it is a vital contribution to the resilience of both the north-east Indian Ocean region and South-East Asia.
With no end to the conflict in sight and a growing refugee population still stuck in limbo, Australia is playing its part to help build a peaceful and stable future for our region. We are working with local, regional and international partners to deliver practical support to the people of Myanmar, displaced Rohingya in Bangladesh and the communities who host them. I've heard firsthand on visits across the region how much this contribution is valued by our regional partners who are confronting the potential of large-scale irregular migration, as desperate conditions encourage dangerous boat journeys. Australia continues to work closely with countries in the region to combat people smuggling and prevent deaths at sea, including as co-chair, alongside Indonesia, of the Bali Process on people smuggling, human trafficking and related transnational crime.
Despite this, conditions for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are deteriorating. Less than 40 per cent of this year's UN-Bangladesh annual appeal for the Rohingya humanitarian response has been met. The United States previously provided 50 per cent of the response's total funding, and cuts to its aid program will be acutely felt in the Indian Ocean region. As the need has increased for humanitarian support to respond to crises in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, the funding shortfall from the international community for the Rohingya crisis has grown. UNICEF was forced to close thousands of aid-run education centres in June due to funding shortages, and sustained food support at current levels is in question beyond September.
During Ramadan this year, the day before the International Day to Combat Islamophobia, UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres visited Cox's Bazar to spotlight the crisis and to beg the world to 'show the Rohingya that the world has not forgotten them'. Since then, the Albanese government has announced a further $10 million in assistance for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and displaced people on the Thai-Myanmar border, on top of an additional $9 million of support through the Australian Humanitarian Partnership to support communities and conflict affected populations in Myanmar. Clearly, though, more needs to be done.
Whilst this complex and intractable humanitarian crisis in our own backyard doesn't attract the same level of international news and social media attention as crises on the other side of the world, Australia cannot forget the plight of the Rohingya. We share a region and we share a future, and it's in all our interests that it's a resilient one.
