Records of IAEA Policy-Making Organs and Legal Instruments

Date range: 1956 – to date

Extent and media: Approx. 330 linear shelf meters of paper records (typed or handwritten), including paper records (Board of Governors and its Committees, General Conference and its Committees), including 1,900 agreements (originals, certified copies), ratifications and credentials.

Records of this sub-fonds document the core legal framework, decisions and deliberations of the Board of Governors and the General Conference as the IAEA Policy-Making Organs. The IAEA Archives also holds the IAEA’s legal instruments, including agreements and treaties. While the texts of agreements are available online in the form of Information Circulars (INFCIRC), the IAEA Archives maintains its own series of INFCIRCs (in English and French) and acts as the custodian of the originals of agreements and treaties.

A few sub-series document the history before the formal establishment of the IAEA in July 1957: copies of records of the Working Level Conference on the Draft IAEA Statute held in Washington (called the ‘12-Nations-Conference’) from February to June 1956 and records of the Conference of the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency in September and October 1956 (hosted by the United Nations, New York). Originals of these records and administrative correspondence can only be found in the United Nations Archives or in the National Archives of the so-called group of ’12-Member-States’ because they were produced and distributed by the Conference’s secretariat.

The Conference of the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency unanimously adopted the IAEA Statute and established the IAEA Preparatory Commission in order to set-up the initial programmatic and financial framework of the Agency for its First General Conference in Vienna 1957. The original records of the IAEA Preparatory Commission produced between 1956 and 1957, including the administrative correspondence, are incorporated in this sub-fonds.