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Melissa Parke is ICAN’s Executive Director, a role she took up on 1 September 2023.
Melissa is a former Australian Minister for International Development and former Member of Parliament for the Australian Labor Party for Fremantle from 2007 to 2016. As an MP, she regularly voiced support for nuclear disarmament, including as a member of a cross-party parliamentary group dedicated to the cause. She has also been an ambassador for ICAN Australia and has served as a patron of the Tom Uren Memorial Fund, which supports ICAN's work.
She began working on nuclear issues in the 1990s when she joined a campaign to oppose the establishment of a global nuclear waste dump in her home state of Western Australia. Her former constituency of Fremantle is a self-declared "nuclear-free zone" and active member of the Hiroshima-based Mayors for Peace network.
Prior to entering the Australian Parliament, Ms Parke served as an international lawyer with the United Nations in Kosovo, Gaza, New York and Lebanon. More recently, she served as a member of the UN Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen.
Melissa has a Masters of Law degree in public international law from Murdoch University, as well as law degree from the University of New South Wales and a Bachelor of Business degree from Curtin University.
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