In addition to featuring prominent and insightful keynote speakers and convening outstanding panels of experts, the organizing committee of the XXI Edoardo Amaldi Conference wished to ensure that those attending the conference participated in the conference, serving as more than an audience. To accomplish this aim, we built in time for discussion in each session, but we also held a forum at the end of each day. The forum speakers would address broad topics that crossed some of the topics of the day’s presentations and discussions, and time would be allowed for other participants to ask questions or remark upon the whole day. This afforded an opportunity to reflect upon ideas, contrasts, and recurring themes.

The Conference was fortunate to have Ambassador Rafael Grossi as the speaker in the first forum. In addition to representing Argentina to the UN organizations in Vienna, Ambassador Grossi was President Designate of the 2020 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference. According to the UN, with 191 parties to the treaty “more countries have ratified the NPT than any other arms limitation and disarmament agreement.” https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/npt/.

The NPT is in some way related to nearly every issue addressed in the Amaldi Conference, whether peaceful uses, safeguards, or disarmament, the NPT is an important element of the international order.

Ambassador Grossi has taken a distinctive approach in the lead up to the 2020 NPT Review Conference (sometimes called the 2020 NPT RevCon), which he described in his remarks. At the time of the conference, Ambassador Grossi was also a candidate to be DG of the IAEA (and later was selected). For this reason, he was unable to attend the conference physically, but he participated by video link. He delivered his talk and stayed connected for the discussion afterward. The text of his talk captured here is actually a transcript.