ICRC Aust 14/9/2026
Dear Ms McCabe,
I am writing to you in your capacity as Head of Mission of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Australia, regarding an unresolved humanitarian consequence of the Vietnam War: the continuing and potentially intergenerational harm associated with Agent Orange and its contaminant, 2,3,7,8-TCDD (dioxin).
I am the daughter of an Australian Army Plant Operator who served in Vietnam in 1969–70. I was born after his service, and I identify as an Agent Orange child. I have attached my birth certificate and my father’s military service record so that my connection to an Australian Vietnam veteran is independently documented.
There is also an important Australian legal and historical dimension to my request.
In 1991, while I was still a minor, Australia incorporated Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions into Australian law through the Geneva Conventions Amendment Act 1991. Article 77, “Protection of children”, provides that children are to receive special respect and that parties must provide them with “the care and aid they require, whether because of their age or for any other reason.”
Yet in 2026, thirty-five years later, there remains no general DVA/RMA legislative pathway through which an adult child of an Australian Vietnam veteran can have their own medical conditions assessed for a causal relationship with their veteran parent’s wartime exposure to Agent Orange/TCDD. The RMA Statements of Principles framework connects disease or injury with the service of the claimant, while the Vietnam Veterans’ Sons & Daughters Support Program remains restricted to five specified conditions.
This creates an important question for the ICRC: what does protection and humanitarian responsibility mean where the consequences of toxic exposure arising from armed conflict may manifest in veterans’ children, but the domestic veterans’ framework provides those children no general mechanism through which that alleged intergenerational war harm can even be medically assessed?
My question to the ICRC is straightforward:
How does the ICRC understand the continuing and intergenerational consequences of Agent Orange/TCDD within international humanitarian law and its work concerning the toxic remnants and legacies of armed conflict?
This question has become increasingly important because recent United Nations work now expressly connects military activity, toxic contamination and consequences extending across generations.
In July 2025, UN Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights Dr Marcos Orellana submitted A/80/174 – Military activities and toxics. The report examines toxic releases associated with military activities before, during and after armed conflict and describes the enduring consequences for human health and the environment.
UN Report A/80/174 – Military activities and toxics:
In August 2026, Dr Orellana’s final thematic report to the UN General Assembly was published. It examines the thirty years of the UN Toxics and Human Rights mandate and identifies military activities among the sources of toxic legacies producing environmental, health and social consequences across generations.
2026 UNGA thematic report:
There is another aspect that I believe is directly relevant to why the Agent Orange issue remains unresolved more than fifty years after the Vietnam War.
In June 2026, the Australian Department of Veterans’ Affairs updated its official history of Agent Orange and the Vietnam War, acknowledging more of the history surrounding chemical exposure and concerns about harm to veterans and their children.
I also draw your attention to the 2023 peer-reviewed paper Conflicts of Interest in the Assessment of Chemicals, Waste, and Pollution, co-authored by Marcos Orellana and Bethanie Carney Almroth, which examines conflicts of interest and tactics used to manufacture scientific doubt in the assessment of hazardous chemicals.
This is particularly significant in my case because my complaint concerning Dow Inc. and Bayer AG resulted in a Final Statement from the Australian National Contact Point for Responsible Business Conduct (AusNCP) in May 2026. I have included that Final Statement within my blog
I have also provided information concerning this matter to United Nations human-rights mechanisms and to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. I include evidence of those processes not to suggest that any of them has made a finding in my favour, but to demonstrate that this is a documented matter that I have pursued through formal international mechanisms.
What I am asking the ICRC to consider is more fundamental.
When exposure arises from chemicals used during armed conflict, and the resulting toxic legacy may continue to affect human health and subsequent generations decades after the fighting has ended, should those affected descendants be understood simply as “veterans’ families” — or as people potentially affected by the continuing humanitarian consequences of war?
For Australian children of Vietnam veterans, that distinction matters.
More than fifty years after the Vietnam War, we remain largely discussed within the language of “children” and “families.” Yet the underlying issue I am raising is not simply family welfare. It is the possible continuation of chemical war harm across generations.
I would be grateful if the ICRC Australian Mission could consider this question within its expertise in international humanitarian law and the humanitarian consequences of warfare, and advise whether this issue falls within an area in which the ICRC has undertaken, or could undertake, further consideration.
Warm Agent Orange Burns regards,
Danielle Stevens
Geneva AP1 Article 77
We will always be a child of a Vietnam Veteran
A formal complaint has been lodged with the International Criminal Court for Crimes against Humanity. The final submission was the 1st of July 2025.
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