Mohamed Mustafa ElBaradei (born 17 June 1942) is an Egyptian law scholar and diplomat who was the last Vice President of Egypt serving on an acting basis from 14 July 2013 until his resignation on 14 August 2013.He was the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an intergovernmental organization under the auspices of the United Nations, from 1997 to 2009. He and the IAEA were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. ElBaradei was also prominently featured in the Western press regarding relatively recent politics in Egypt, particularly the 2011 revolution which ousted President Hosni Mubarak, and the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état.
Public career as IAEA Director General (1997 - 2009)
ElBaradei began to serve as Director General of the IAEA, which is based in Vienna, on 1 December 1997, succeeding Hans Blix of Sweden.He was re-elected for two more four-year terms in 2001 and in 2005. His third and last term ended in November 2009. ElBaradei's tenure has been marked by high-profile, non-proliferation issues, which include the inspections in Iraq preceding the March 2003 invasion, and tensions over the nuclear program of Iran.
Nobel Peace Prize
On 7 October 2005, ElBaradei and the IAEA were announced as joint recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize for their "efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy, for peaceful purposes, is used in the safest possible way." ElBaradei donated all of his winnings to building orphanages in Cairo. The IAEA's winnings are being spent to train scientists from developing countries to use nuclear techniques in combating cancer and malnutrition. ElBaradei is the fourth Egyptian to receive the Nobel Prize, following Anwar Sadat (1978 in Peace),Naguib Mahfouz (1988 in Literature), and Ahmed Zewail (1999 in Chemistry).
In his Nobel lecture, ElBaradei said that the changing landscape of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament may be defined by the emergence of an extensive black market in nuclear material and equipment, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and sensitive nuclear
technology, and the stagnation in nuclear disarmament. To combat proliferation, ElBaradei has suggested keeping nuclear and radiological material out of the hands of extremist groups, tightening control over the operations for producing the nuclear material that could be used in weapons, and accelerating disarmament efforts. ElBaradei also stated that only one percent of the money spent to develop new weapons would be enough to feed the entire world and that, if we hope to escape self-destruction, nuclear weapons should have no place in our collective conscience and no role in our security.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said that he was delighted that the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize had been awarded to the UN nuclear watchdog and its head, ElBaradei. "The secretary general congratulates him and the entire staff of the agency, past and present, on their contributions to global peace," a spokesman for Annan said.
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