Alfonso Garcia Robles

Alfonso García Robles was a Mexican diplomat and politician who, in conjunction with Sweden's Alva Myrdal, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982. He was born in Zamora, Michoacán, and trained in law at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the Institute of Higher International Studies (IHEI) in Paris, France (1936), and The Hague Academy of International Law in the Netherlands (1938) before joining his country's foreign service in 1939. He served as a delegate to the 1945 San Francisco Conference that established the United Nations. He subsequently worked in the UN Secretariat for several years. As director general in the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the late 1950s, García Robles played a central role at the Law of the Sea conferences, which defined the continental shelf for conservation purposes. While serving as ambassador to Brazil, he first encountered the proposition of excluding nuclear armaments from Latin America, and, after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, he persuaded the Mexican government to support such a policy. His unremitting efforts eventually led to the Treaty of Tlatelolco (1967), which committed 22 nations of Latin America to bar nuclear weapons from their territories. A year later he helped draft the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. He was appointed permanent representative to the Disarmament Conference in Geneva in 1977. In 1978 he served as chairman of the Mexican delegation to the UN General Assembly’s special session on disarmament. He was admitted to the Colegio Nacional of Mexico in 1972. His name was inscribed on the Wall of Honor of the Palacio Legislativo de San Lázaro, the seat of the Chamber of Deputies, in 2003. His widow died in 2005 aged 83.