Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC QC FASSA FAIIA is the Chair of the APLN. He was a Cabinet Minister in the Hawke and Keating Australian Governments for thirteen years, including as Attorney-General (1983-84), Minister for Resources and Energy (1984–87), and Foreign Minister (1988–96) when he initiated the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. After leaving Australian politics, he was President of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group from 2000 to 2009, and Chancellor of The Australian National University from 2010 to 2019. Long engaged in nuclear policy issues, he was a member of the Blix Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Zedillo Commission on the Role of the IAEA to 2020 and Beyond, co-chaired with Yoriko Kawaguchi the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (2009), and from 2010-15 was inaugural Convenor of APLN, and Chair of the International Advisory Board of the ANU Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (CNND). He was awarded the 2010 Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute Freedom from Fear Award for his pioneering work on the responsibility to protect concept and his contributions to conflict prevention and resolution, arms control and disarmament. Over the last fifty years he has written or edited, solely or jointly, thirteen books, published nearly 150 journal articles, chapters, and reports, and written hundreds of newspaper and online articles on foreign relations, human rights and legal and constitutional reform.