U.S. Statement – As Delivered by Chargé d’Affaires, ad interim, Howard Solomon – Agenda Item 3 – Strengthening of the Agency’s Technical Cooperation Activities – Technical Cooperation Report for 2025
Vienna, Austria, June 8, 2026
Chair,
The United States thanks the IAEA for its critical work in expanding the peaceful uses of nuclear technology worldwide. Through the Technical Cooperation Program, the IAEA continues to deliver on the foundational
bargain of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, bringing the benefits of nuclear science and technology to Member States.
The United States remains the largest contributor to the Technical Cooperation Fund, providing 25 percent. We regularly provide significant extrabudgetary support and are proud to announce our recent allocation of $1.5 million to support the IAEA’s efforts to combat New World Screwworm through sterile insect technique (SIT). This substantial investment underscores America’s commitment to the IAEA’s core mandate of accelerating atomic energy’s contribution to peace, health, and prosperity worldwide.
U.S. contributions supported critical technical cooperation activities across multiple sectors in 2025. In health, the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center provided expertise in radiation oncology and medical physics to strengthen Member States’ cancer care capacity, including helping to establish radiotherapy centers in Malawi and Honduras. In food and agriculture, U.S.-supported programs deployed sterile insect techniques to combat disease-carrying mosquitoes and agricultural pests, protecting both American and global food security. The Atoms4Food initiative, backed by U.S. support, helped countries improve crop production, manage soil and water resources, and enhance food safety using nuclear techniques. U.S.- funded water resource management projects helped Member States use isotope hydrology to assess groundwater availability and quality, while environmental monitoring programs strengthened national capacities to detect and respond to radiological hazards.
Chair,
The United States strongly advocates for technical cooperation based on rigorous needs analysis, ensuring resources address genuine development priorities aligned with the IAEA’s foundational mandate. We have consistently emphasized that TC projects should focus on the core mission of peaceful nuclear applications rather than peripheral objectives. This approach maximizes impact and ensures taxpayer dollars deliver measurable results in nuclear safety, security, and peaceful applications that directly benefit Member States’ needs. We regret that the report continues to include politically divisive references to climate change and reiterate our position that U.S. funding cannot be used for such work nor should the Agency continue to focus on issues outside its mandate.
The United States encourages all Member States with financial capacity to provide extrabudgetary support above and beyond their assessed contribution to the TCF. With increased demand for TC projects outpacing the IAEA’s ability to fully fund all requests, it is unacceptable and frankly embarrassing that a major donor like China, the second largest economy in the world, is one of the top 21 recipients of TC funding, receiving more TC funding than 130 other Member States, while providing minimal extrabudgetary contributions. Member States calling for sufficient, assured, and predictable funding should push to eliminate this type of waste and request that the limited TC resources be prioritized for those most in need – not the largest economies in the world that should be contributing to this fund rather than drawing from it.
In addition, it is inappropriate that Iran continues to seek access to the TC program even as it stonewalls Agency efforts to resolve its noncompliance. We call on the IAEA to vigorously monitor TC activities to ensure they are implemented in full conformity with existing UN Security Council Resolutions.
Finally, as we seek to reform the IAEA to better deliver on its mandate, we hope all Member States will join us in urging the Secretariat to make every effort to improve the design and delivery of TC projects and dispense with ineffective or peripheral projects that are either underperforming or lie outside the IAEA’s mandate-driven work. The United States remains dedicated to ensuring technical cooperation delivers tangible benefits to Member States while maintaining fiscal responsibility and alignment with the IAEA’s core mandate.