The main activities are: 1, providing technical assistance to member States to help them carry out research and application of peaceful use of nuclear energy;
2. Conclude "Safeguard Agreements" with relevant countries and international organizations, and safeguard the technical assistance projects provided by the agency itself or through its introduction and the projects entrusted to member States or other international organizations according to nuclear non-proliferation obligations (such as those stipulated in nuclear non-proliferation treaties such as the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the Treaty of Tlatelolco and the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty), so as to ensure that these projects are not used for any military purposes;
3. Organize the research and formulation of safety regulations for the use of nuclear energy, and recommend them to all countries in the world;
4. Sign scientific research contracts with relevant member countries or international specialized agencies;
5. Convene various scientific and technological conferences and organize information exchange on the peaceful use of atomic energy by establishing information networks, libraries and publishing books and periodicals.
After four years of hard negotiations,1May 1997, the Agency's Special Council completed the "93+2 Plan" on measures to strengthen the safeguards mechanism and adopted the model additional protocol for safeguards. This marks the expansion of the Agency's safeguards capability and scope from only verifying the nuclear activities declared by various countries to detecting the secret nuclear facilities and activities of non-nuclear-weapon States.
1In September 1997, the IAEA concluded the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, the Protocol to Amend the Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage and the Convention on Supplementary Sources of Funds.