Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Israel's invasion of Gaza is catastrophic, with over 27,000 deaths in 123 days of war, many of them women and children, who too often bear the brunt of war. The women, girls and people who menstruate who are left fighting for their survival in Gaza face the additional challenge of period poverty, with no access to clean and safe menstrual products or essential reproductive health medications.

ActionAid Australia and other activists have heard reports that displaced women have been using scraps from tents, old clothes and dirty towels as substitutes for period products. People don't have access to enough water, meaning they can't wash themselves or their makeshift sanitary products. The absence of period products can lead to severe, irreversible and long-term health complications. Safe and private areas for women and girls to manage their menstrual hygiene do not exist, which only inflicts further harm on those suffering through this crisis.

Doctors Without Borders reports that requests for contraceptive pills have quadrupled as women seek to control or block their periods, given the absence of period products. Yet, in the midst of this humanitarian crisis, the Albanese government has suspended its funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Suspending life-saving funding to the largest relief provider in Gaza is nothing short of catastrophic. Women and girls in Gaza are desperately dependent on UNRWA for their very survival. Labor cannot keep backing an invasion that has killed over 27,000 people, many of them women and children, let alone withdraw funding from an essential service that would provide necessary menstrual products to hundreds of thousands of women and girls trying to survive without them. The Greens continue our calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.