ICAN

APLN member Melissa Parke has been appointed as the new Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN International). Ms Parke has over two decades of experience in the fields of international development, human rights, law, and politics, and has served as an ICAN Australia ambassador, in which capacity she has championed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) since 2017.

President of ICAN, APLN member Akira Kawasaki welcomed Ms Parke’s appointment: “We are delighted to be able to announce Melissa Parke as our new Executive Director. She has great diplomatic and political experience combined with a long-term commitment to nuclear disarmament, so she is ideally placed to lead ICAN’s advocacy for the universalization of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which is what the world needs as it faces the heightened risk nuclear weapons could be used in conflict for the first time since 1945.”

Ms Parke brings to the position of ICAN’s executive director a combination of leadership, diplomatic, conflict-resolution, managerial, political, and legal skills and experiences.

She reacted to the announcement: “I am honoured to be taking up this important role in the global campaign to rid the world of these weapons of mass destruction. The very existence of nuclear weapons, let alone their testing or use, is a moral injury to the planet. The only effective treatment for a nuclear weapons catastrophe is prevention.”

The original post can be found on the ICAN website here.