Alexander Kmentt is an Austrian career diplomat currently serving as Permanent Representative of Austria to the United Nations and Specialised Agencies in Geneva.
A leading figure in nuclear disarmament, he is one of the architects of the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons initiative and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). He organised the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in December 2014 and developed what became the Humanitarian Pledge, which received the formal support of 135 states and was a significant catalyst for the TPNW. He went on to serve as President of the TPNW’s inaugural Meeting of States Parties in June 2022. In 2015, the US-based Arms Control Association named him Arms Control Person of the Year.
Alexander has held a number of senior roles across his career, including Director of the Department for Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation at the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Austrian Permanent Representative to the EU’s Political and Security Committee, Deputy Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, and Special Assistant to the Executive Secretary at the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization.
From 2019 to 2021 he took a sabbatical as Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, during which he wrote The Treaty Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons: how it was achieved and why it matters, published in May 2021.
He holds an Austrian law degree and an MPhil in International Relations from the University of Cambridge.
Image: BMEIA/Michael Gruber
