Garcia Robles, Alfonso

Youth

Born in Zamora , Michoacan, in the family of Kirino and Teresa Garcia Robles. Initially, he was going to become a priest , but then changed his mind by entering the law department of the National University of Mexico City . In 1933 he graduated from it with a degree in international law and international relations, after which he continued his studies in Paris ( 1934 - 1937 ) and at the Academy of International Law in The Hague ( 1938 ). While still in Europe , Robles entered the diplomatic service and spent two years at the Mexican Embassy in Sweden .

Career start

Returning to his homeland in 1941, he was appointed head of the department of international organizations, and then director general of the political and diplomatic service. In 1945, he joined the Mexican delegation at a conference in San Francisco , at which the UN was created. Further work in the UN secretariat in New York . After returning to Mexico in 1957, he was appointed head of the Department of Europe, Asia and Africa at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and therefore took an active part in the conferences on the law of the sea in 1958 and 1960 .

Peacekeeping

From 1962 to 1964 he was the Ambassador of Mexico to Brazil . After the events of the Caribbean crisis of 1962, he seriously thought about an agreement on the creation of a nuclear-free zone in Latin America.

In 1964, he was appointed Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mexico and in this post played a key role in the signing of the Tlatelolco Treaty ( 1967 ) on the prohibition of nuclear weapons in Latin America.

In 1967, he was instructed to head the Mexican delegation at the UN Geneva Conference on Disarmament, where, together with Alva Myrdal, he took an active part in the development of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons , adopted in 1968 by 115 countries of the world.

In 1970 - 1975 he was the representative of Mexico at the UN, then for a year he served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mexico. Since 1977, he became the Permanent Representative of Mexico to the UN Committee on Disarmament in Geneva . He strove to reach a compromise between the superpowers on the question of ending the arms race. In 1978, the first such session took place, at which Robles was responsible for the preparation of the draft text of the resolution, which received the informal title “Final Document”. At the special session of the UN General Assembly in 1982, he proposed the organization of a worldwide disarmament campaign. Due to the position of the superpowers, it was not possible to develop a single document, but the idea gained wide support, and in the summer of 1982, thousands of anti-nuclear demonstrations took place in the USA and Europe.

Recent years

In 1982, together with Alva Myrdal, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for twenty years of work in the field of disarmament and the art of conducting international negotiations ^[1] . In his Nobel lecture, Robles spoke about the preparation and content of the Tlatelolco Treaty , reminding the audience that the Latin American nuclear-free zone, unfortunately, did not find followers in other densely populated territories.

In 1985, he was elected Chairman of the UN Committee on Disarmament.

September 2, 1991 he was gone.

Leading the UN mission in the Middle East in 1949 , Robles met with the Peruvian delegate, Juana Maria Sislo Valdelomar, whom he married a year later. Two sons were born in the family - Alfonso and Fernando.

Over the years of his diplomatic activity, Robles has authored 20 books and more than 300 articles on international relations.

• Biography on slovopedia.com