Diego Cándano Laris was a Nonresident Fellow with the Nuclear Safeguards program. He focuses on non-proliferation and strategic trade issues. He chaired the Consultative Group of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) between 2017 and 2019. The Consultative Group is tasked to hold consultations on issues associated with the NSG Guidelines on nuclear supply and its technical annexes or control lists. During these two years the NSG made substantive progress on a wide range of issues as reported in the Jūrmala and Nur-Sultan Public Statements.
Mr. Cándano represented Mexico in the NSG and the Wassenaar Arrangement after Mexico joined these two export control regimes and has been a regular speaker in seminars and workshops on export controls, including activities by the State Department EXBS Program, the EU P2P Export Control Programme, and other national export control outreach projects. He has also participated in several seminars on nuclear safeguards, including the IAEA Safeguards Symposium and several meetings of the European Safeguards Research and Development Association (ESARDA). Since June 2019 he supports the work of the current Chair of the NSG Consultative Group.
He has been posted to the Mexican Embassy in Austria, where in addition to his work on export control regimes he was responsible for a range of bilateral issues with Austria, Slovakia and Slovenia. Mr. Cándano served as advisor on foreign policy to the President of Mexico between 2008 and 2012, where among other things he was involved in the substantive preparation of the G20-2012 Leaders’ Summit in Los Cabos and the Sixteenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 16) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Cancun in 2010. Previously, he was advisor for North American affairs in the Mexican Foreign Ministry.
Mr. Cándano has an MPhil from Oxford on Modern Chinese Studies with a focus on Chinese foreign policy and has published on different topics, including export controls, civil nuclear cooperation, Mexican foreign policy and climate change.
