A Return to Transparent Safeguards Reporting

This paper reviews changes introduced in recent years by the Secretariat to the Safeguards Implementation Report (SIR) in providing less information about inspection goal attainment while adding more financial information. Some of these changes can be attributed to the transition from criteria driven safeguards implementation to the integrated safeguards, and to the introduction of implementation guidelines. This, however, has led to a situation of a weakening of connection in the SIR between safeguards goal attainment and the safeguards statement. Implementation guidelines require a set of minimum quantitative and timeliness verification goals to bet met at the level of a facility and a state, which are not anymore reflected in the SIR. It is equally difficult to assess the impact of the stated implementation problems with the overall conclusions. This paper highlights some of the deficiencies to be address to connect verification goal attainment with the overall conclusions while fulfilling the confidentiality requirements.