SYDNEY, 16 APRIL 2008: MAPW President Dr Sue Wareham used the example of Iraq to illustrate the need for action to to make warfare a discredited and unusable option in resolving conflicts.

"We know that war brings with it the risk, if not the certainty, of humanitarian disaster, enormous loss of life, destruction of essential services, terrible human rights abuses, floods of refugees, crippling economic cost, and a devastated environment", Dr Wareham told a Sydney Peace Foundation conference.

"Iraq is suffering all of these, as predicted over five years ago by many individuals and organisations."

"During the last 100 years the impact of warfare on civilians has changed dramatically, to the point where warfare can accurately be regarded as an attack on civil society."

• Read more about the humanitarian costs of the Iraq war, and of war more generally, in Dr Wareham's address to the conference Iraq Never Again: Building Peace, Ending War.