The IAEA’s General Conference, which began this morning in Vienna, elected Kuwait’s Ambassador, Sadiq M. Marafi, as President of the 65th regular session of the Conference.
Ambassador Marafi is Kuwait’s Ambassador to Austria and Permanent Representative to the international organizations in Vienna, including the IAEA, since September 2013. He has been a career diplomat since 1993 at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kuwait
At Kuwait’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Marafi’s assignments included an appointment to the Permanent Mission to the United Nations Office in Geneva, from July 1996 to August 2012. Prior to that, he served as a diplomatic attaché at the Department of Asia and Africa.
Ambassador Marafi has served as Vice Chair of the Article XIV Conference on Facilitating the Entry into Force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in New York (2019), Vice President of the Conference of the States Parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption in St. Petersburg, Russia (2017) and Vice President of the 13th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Doha, Qatar (2015).
He chaired the Kuwaiti delegation in the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in 2012, the Troika of Angola at the Universal Periodic Review in 2011 and the Kuwaiti Delegation at the Committee against Torture in 2011.
Ambassador Marafi served as Governor of Kuwait on the IAEA’s Board of Governors (2019-2021). Since January 2018, he has served as a board member at the Ban Ki-moon Center for Global Citizens.