Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The important 70th anniversary of the Geneva convention is recognised in this chamber—very important. Australia has been a key to supporting the Geneva convention applied around the word. I want to add remarks about the complexity of that challenge. It is not simply a matter of recognising the convention and putting hope in the Red Crosses in every corner of the world where there is conflict. Conflict is changing. I'll run through another couple of practical examples of that and some of the limitations.

My personal experience was 1992, when I found myself trapped in a civil war in Afghanistan after the fleeing of the then Russian sponsored leader and the breakdown of the situation in that country. Very rapidly the ICRC hospital became the heart of the Western response to try to maintain a semblance of stability as one side basically occupied the mountains and shelled Kabul, and the other side effectively occupied the city area itself. What I saw in the work of the Red Cross was incredible bravery and spirit. They were working three eight-hour shifts, 24/7, to try to keep up with the casualties. What we saw was an effort in a country where the rules of war are completely different; you can't change the culture of a country by showing up in a few white four-wheel drives.

It's one thing to ratify these things and another thing to actually respect the fundamental elements, which aren't hard to understand, about how we treat a captured prisoner and how we deal with prisoners of war—women and children caught in the crossfire—and institutions, like religious and cultural institutions and schools. It's all common sense for us, because Australia has deeply ingrained it in both our military and our society. That work needs to be continued. Democratisation reached a peak in, some would argue, 2006, and we're now seeing many countries that were democracies sliding away from that. That means there's no guarantee that some of these important member states that have ratified this convention will continue to adhere to it. And therein lies the complexity: when everything breaks down and we're in a war-like environment, there's an enormous temptation to do as much damage as possible. That's when the Geneva conventions need to be applied.

What I personally witnessed in Afghanistan was an effort to, as you'd be well aware, exact some retribution on families of combatants when they were at their most vulnerable. Often, when the men were away fighting somewhere else, their families were exposed to this. It wasn't uncommon even after a period of fighting to track down the families as the ex-combatants came back and dished out summary justice overnight, saying, 'We're taking your husband'—or your father—'away tomorrow and that will be it.' And those people did actually disappear. There was also the intolerable situation of combatants coming through a Red Cross hospital and selectively picking out people on the other side and shooting them in their hospital beds. That was something the ICRC staff had to survive. Lastly, of course, there's the very questionable area of a party, sensing there's more good being done to their opposition in the local ICRC hospital, firing mortars and rockets into that hospital compound itself for the purposes of making sure their opponent isn't benefitting more than they are from the provision of ICRC support. Those things are always going to confront us wherever we go in wars of the future.

Wars of the future will also be more complicated. There'll be more contractors and NGOs involved, and they'll be a lot greater challenges around the coordination of these multiple parties and trying to identify who's actually adhering to the convention and who isn't. We saw this situation in Ukraine. We couldn't always be sure who exactly pressed the button, who was responsible for the atrocity. It's of great credit to the international courts that Ukraine, in particular, has led to, at least, some charges being laid in what would otherwise have been an incredibly opaque process. So it's not impossible but it's certainly very complicated, and I'd argue it's going to get more complicated over time. Let's celebrate 70 years, but let us also make sure we can talk about it 70 years from now.

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