Hans Blix

Dr. Hans Blix is the recipient of PSR-LA’s 2008 Peacemaker Award for his enduring efforts to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction.

The award was presented to him on April 3 by Tova Fuller, a PSR-LA Board Member and dual M.D./Ph.D. UCLA student, and Dr. Bennett Ramberg, a former State Department policy analyst and coordinator of the Global Security Seminars, which are co-hosted by PSR-LA and the Center for Defense Information.

As International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General and later as head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission, Dr. Blix participated in a process that eradicated the Iraqi nuclear weapons program.

In 2003, he headed the UN weapons inspectors who were sent to Iraq to find out if Saddam Hussein’s regime had destroyed its weapons of mass destruction. Dr. Blix courageously opposed proponents of war, stating that Iraq had probably destroyed all its weapons of mass destruction in the early 1990s. He later declared the war illegal.

In 2004 Blix was named as chairman of the newly formed International Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction. The purpose of the commission is to find new ways to achieve the disarming and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Dr. Blix has also written several books about international and constitutional law and international affairs, most recently, Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters.