This week the city of Humboldt received a key figure in Argentine diplomacy of the past 27 years. This is Diplomat Rogelio Pfirter who visited two local institutions and had a meeting with the local Chief Executive Duilio Rohrmann.
During his visit to Humboldt, Pfirter was accompanied by his wife, and a group of friends. The Argentine lawyer and diplomat was Argentine Ambassador to Britain between 1995 and 1999, and to the Holy See from 2015 to 2019.
“Apart from our Commune and interested in historical events such as the “Humboldt Uprising”, he visited the Beck-Herzog Popular Library, which this year celebrates its centenary, hosted by Viviana Chiavasa, and later the Museum of Colonies, from which he formed Presidents Rubén Fladung and Tomás Young Falkenmayer, a History student, in part,” said the community authority.

Carrera

Rogelio Pfirter graduated as a lawyer from the Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Pfirter was a student of Jorge Mario Bergoglio at a Catholic school. In addition, the priest at the time, while he was working as a literature professor at a Jesuit college, promoted a book by Pfirter.
During his diplomatic career he held various positions in the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1992 he was promoted to Ambassador and in the same year he became Director of the Brazil-Argentina Accounting and Control Agency for Nuclear Materials (ABACC) and Director of the National Commission for Space Activities (CONAE). Later he was appointed Deputy Secretary of Foreign Policy at the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Between 1995 and 2000, he served as the Argentine ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In early 2002 he became deputy minister for foreign policy, under foreign minister Carlos Ruckauf.
On 25 July 2002, Pfirter was unanimously elected as Director General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague, Netherlands. He was elected to a second term in 2006. Pfirter’s tenure was hailed as a time of consolidation and strengthening of the OPCW following the controversial departure of his Brazilian predecessor José Bustani, who was sacked. Pfirter garnered support for the elimination of chemical weapons and successfully ran the Secretariat with zero nominal growth (ZNG) for four consecutive years. In 2010 he was replaced by Ahmet zümcü Turki.
In 2009 he together with former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev wrote the book “Lessons on Disarmament from the Chemical Weapons Convention”. After retiring in 2010, he became a member of the Global Council on Weapons of Mass Destruction at the World Economic Forum.
In 2013, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, proposed Pfirter to lead a chemical weapons inspector mission in Syria that would determine whether Syrian President Bashar Al Assad used such weapons against civilians. Her participation was vetoed by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Since 2015, he has been a member of the Academic Council of the Universidad Austral (Argentina) School of Politics, Government and International Relations.

Awards and decorations

Pfirter has received several international awards, including the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of Chile, as well as the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany; French Legion of Honor officer; Commander of the Dutch Order of Orange-Nassau; The Order of the Duke of Branimir of Croatia and the Catholic Order of Isabella of Spain, in addition to the Belgian city of Ypres medals and decorations in Italy and Colombia.
In 2018, the Konex Foundation awarded him the Konex Award – Diploma of Merit as one of the most important diplomats of the last decade in Argentina, reports El Litoral.