Alva Myrdal was a Swedish social scientist and politician. She was a high-ranking member of the Swedish Social Democratic Worker’s Party. In 1943, she joined the party’s committee appointed with the task of developing a programme for the post-war years.
From the late 1940s, she worked for the UN as the head of the section responsible for the social policy. In the early 1950s, she worked for the UNESCO as the Director of the Department of Social Sciences.
In 1962, she was sent as the Swedish delegate to the international disarmament conference in Geneva (a role she kept until 1973), and in the years 1966—1973 she was also the Minister for Disarmament. She contributed to founding the Stockholm International Peace Research institute (SIPRI).
Alfonso Garcia Robles was a Mexican politician and diplomat. In the early 1960s, he was an ambassador to Brazil and then he was appointed the Deputy Foreign Minister.
In the years 1971–1975, he served as the Mexico’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations before an appointment as the Foreign Minister. In 1977, he was the special representative of his country to the Committee on Disarmament in Geneva.
He played a central role in the UN’s efforts to promote international disarmament. He was called the father of the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean (Treaty of Tlatelolco) signed in 1967; it was one of the reasons for awarding him the Nobel Prize.