 I send my greetings to participants in the 2020 Peace Memorial Ceremony in the city of Hiroshima. The thoughts of all of us at the International Atomic Energy Agency are with you. As you mark the 75th anniversary of the tragic events of August 6, 1945. The IAA helps to make it less likely that nuclear weapons will ever be used again by verifying that nuclear materials are not being diverted from peaceful purposes. This is our unique contribution to international peace and security in the 21st century. Our inspectors are on the road every day visiting nuclear facilities throughout the world and providing detailed objective reports on countries' nuclear activities. In this way, the IAA brings the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the NPT, to life. We make the NPT a concrete reality rather than just letters on a page. Thanks to the impartiality of the agency's reports, countries can have confidence that other nations are not secretly building nuclear weapons. This makes it possible for countries to work together without suspicion. They do not have to rely on mere expressions of goodwill from each other. The existence of nuclear material inevitably draws malevolent interest from terrorists and other criminals. We help our 171 member states to guard against the risk of nuclear terrorism by ensuring that nuclear and other radioactive materials and the associated facilities are properly protected. Our work is vital for ensuring that the world can enjoy the benefits of peaceful nuclear science and technology to generate electricity, treat cancer, grow more food and fight pandemics such as COVID-19 and in many other areas. Those benefits are truly enormous and they continue to grow. Today, we remember with great sadness the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but we look forward with confidence and hope to a future in which nuclear science and technology are used exclusively to improve the well-being and prosperity of the people of the world.