Pugwash President Jayantha Dhanapala reflects on the life of Pugwash Council Member Miguel Marin Bosch.
KANDY – I am personally grieved to learn of the death of Ambassador Miguel Marin Bosch, a redoubtable champion of disarmament throughout his distinguished career as Mexico’s Disarmament Ambassador in Geneva and other multilateral fora.
Miguel Marin Bosch was closely associated with me in several Review Conferences of the Treaty for the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) where he stood steadfast against any compromise on fundamental principles. With his prodigious expertise and mordant wit, he was the bane of some of the nuclear weapon states who shamelessly lobbied to silence him, especially at the NPT Review and Extension Conference of 1995.
We were closely associated in the Conference on Disarmament, in the First Committee of the General Assembly, and other disarmament fora. Our comradeship in Pugwash was all too brief but Miguel was one of our stalwarts.
On my assumption of duties as Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament heading a re-established Department for Disarmament Affairs in the UN in New York, I was happy Miguel accepted my invitation to join the Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters where he made an enormous contribution with several initiatives such as on Disarmament Education on which he chaired the Group of Governmental Experts.
Mexico and Latin America, the first continent to have a nuclear weapon free zone fifty years ago, have produced many outstanding diplomats dedicated to disarmament. Among them Alfonso Garcia Robles and Miguel Marin Bosch’s names will shine as a models for future generations of diplomats and others working on multilateral disarmament.
I send my condolences to the family, to the Government and to the people of Mexico. Pugwash has suffered a grievous and irreparable loss.
* Miguel Marin Bosch is a University Professor of Disarmament and International Security and Founder and President of Desarmex, an NGO devoted to disarmament and non-proliferation education. He is also a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials and the Latin American and Caribbean Leadership Network for Nuclear Disarmament and Nonproliferation. He was formerly a career diplomat of the Mexican Foreign Service and a former Foreign Minister. [IDN-InDepthNews – 28 April 2017]
Photo: Miguel Marin Bosch. Credit: Pugwash
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