Grant, James

▪ 1996

      U.S. international organization executive (b. May 12, 1922, Beijing, China—d. Jan. 28, 1995, Mount Kisco, N.Y.), was UNICEF's executive director for 15 years and was credited with making it the UN's most respected specialized agency. Grant earned a degree in economics from the University of California at Berkeley (1943) and a law degree from Harvard University (1951). After World War II he served in China with the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, and after practicing law (1951-54) in Washington, D.C., he served in such agencies as the International Cooperation Administration (1958-62), the Agency for International Development (1967-69), and the Overseas Development Council (1969-79) before becoming head of UNICEF in 1980. That year he began to issue The State of the World's Children, an annual report that spotlighted the world's successes and failures in meeting its children's needs. Leading what he considered a child survival revolution, Grant campaigned tirelessly around the world to bring easy, low-cost solutions to children's health problems. He was never without a supply of oral rehydration salts, a simple mixture of baking soda, glucose, and salt used for treating diarrhea, a leading child killer. The UN estimated that he had helped save 25 million young lives. Grant also organized the World Summit for Children (1990), the largest gathering of world leaders that had ever met to discuss a single topic. More than 100 countries made a commitment to achieving the summit's goals by the year 2000. Grant was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994. Even after cancer forced him to retire from UNICEF only a week before his death, Grant continued his campaign for U.S. ratification of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, a legal guarantee of children's basic rights. At his memorial service, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that the U.S. would become the 178th country to sign it.

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