'Everywhere I go I have seen the effects of violence, it's haunting': Natasha Stott Despoja

By Deborah Snow
Updated December 7 2016 - 7:08am, first published 5:16am
Natasha Stott-Despoja will step down in January as Australia's ambassador for women and girls. Photo: Nick Moir
Natasha Stott-Despoja will step down in January as Australia's ambassador for women and girls. Photo: Nick Moir
Natasha Stott-Despoja told the Lowy institute "there are people I have met and things I've seen in the last few years that have shaken me". Photo: Nick Moir
Natasha Stott-Despoja told the Lowy institute "there are people I have met and things I've seen in the last few years that have shaken me". Photo: Nick Moir

There are some sights that Natasha Stott Despoja will never wipe from memory. Like the women she met in some clinics in Papua New Guinea, who came in just having had their hands or feet severed. Or the children she came across – in Bhutan, Madagascar and elsewhere – who had been trafficked for sex.