On November 20, Italy’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Maurizio Massari, received the medal of the Foreign Policy Association (FPA), an organization that has been promoting public debate on foreign policy and global issues in the United States for over 100 years.
The ceremony took place during an event organized in Massari’s honor at the Harvard Club in New York, attended by senior UN officials, ambassadors, political analysts, and representatives of economic and financial institutions.
The FPA’s highest award was presented by President Noel Lateef, who highlighted the Ambassador’s ability, in his role as Italy’s permanent representative to the UN and during his more than 40-year diplomatic career, to promote effective multilateralism and widespread awareness of international issues.
Massari said he was honored to receive the award and tracked the milestones of his diplomatic service, which began during the Cold War and bipolar order and continues today in an era of “global disorder,” which is about to be upended by the further spread of new technologies and applications of artificial intelligence.
“In recent years, I have witnessed the transformation of the diplomat’s work. Information is now much more accessible and abundant than when I started, but precisely for this reason, it is no less difficult to discern,” said the Ambassador, adding “I am convinced that human contact and the direct exchange of opinions and assessments remain essential both for understanding major global and multilateral issues and for promoting informed public debate on foreign policy and its impact on people’s lives.”
The Foreign Policy Association award has been given to such distinguished figures as Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank; Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia; Timothy Geithner, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York; and Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
