26 October 2010 at 17.15 Lund University Hall
Welcome address Professor Per Eriksson Vice-Chancellor of Lund University
Address Professor Christer Jönsson Professor of Political Science, Lund University Chair of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS)
Towards a more Peaceful World? On disarmament, security and the UN Dr. Hans Blix former Minister for Foreign Affairs former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
Concluding address Ambassador Hans Corell former Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and Legal Counsel of the United Nations
Chairman of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute
Dr. Hans Blix
Hans Blix, a prominent lawyer and international civil servant, was born in Uppsala in 1928. He studied law at Uppsala University and international law at the Universities of Cambridge, Columbia and Stockholm. He defended his thesis – Treaty-Making Power – for the degree of Doctor of Law in 1959 and was subsequently appointed Assistant Professor of Public International Law at Stockholm University. In 1962, Dr. Blix was appointed Adviser on International Law at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and he thereafter held various positions in the Ministry, including that of Undersecretary of State. From 1978 to 1979, he was Minister for Foreign Affairs in a Liberal government. From 1981 to 1997, Dr. Blix served as Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an intergovernmental organization in the UN system and located in Vienna. In that capacity he was responsible for the mandatory nuclear inspections in Iraq that the Security Council of the UN entrusted to the Agency in 1991. From 2000 to 2003, Dr. Blix was the Executive Chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) to resolve issues relating to biological and chemical weapons and missiles in Iraq. Some 700 inspections at some 500 different sites did not point to the existence of any proscribed weapons. Dr. Blix reported on the Commission’s work to the Security Council. After leaving the UN he described the work in Iraq in the book Disarming Iraq (2004). In 2003, Dr. Blix became the Chairman of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, an independent international body set up on the initiative of Anna Lindh. In 2006, the Commission presented its final report – Weapons of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Arms. In 2008, Dr. Blix published a book entitled Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters.