Rogelio Pfirter

Rogelio Pfirter is an Argentine diplomat. He was the Director General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) from 2002 to 2010. Pfirter was born in Santa Fe, Argentina, on 25 August 1948. He graduated as a lawyer from the Universidad Nacional del Litoral (Argentina). He is married to Isabel Serantes Braun.

Professional career

During his diplomatic career, Pfirter held various positions at the Argentine Foreign Ministry. In 1992 he was promoted to the rank of Ambassador and in the same year he became the Director of the Argentine-Brazilian Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC) and the Director of the Argentine Space Agency (CONAE). He was subsequently appointed Undersecretary for Foreign Policy at the Argentine MFA. He was the Ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from 1995 to 2000.

In 2002, Pfirter was unanimously elected the Director-General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague, The Netherlands. He was elected for a second term in 2006. Pfirter’s tenure was praised as a time of consolidation and strengthening of the OPCW after the controversial departure of his predecessor José Bustani. Pfirter gathered support for chemical weapons destruction and as a manager he succeeded in administering the Secretariat with zero nominal growth (ZNG) for four years in a row.

After retiring in 2010, he became a member of the Global Council on Weapons of Mass Destruction at the World Economic Forum.

Awards

Pfirter has received a number of international awards including Grand Cross of the Orden of Merit from Chile as well as Germany; Officier of the Legion of Honour from France and Commandeur of the Order of Orange-Nassau from the Netherlands.