Poul Hartling, who died on April 30th aged 85, was a former prime minister of Denmark who will be remembered outside his native country as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from 1978 to 1985.
As vast numbers fled from Indochina and Afghanistan, and many others were displaced in Africa and central America, Poul Hartling battled on their behalf with hosts and donors.
Born in Copenhagen, he went to school there and took a degree in divinity. After the war, he served as a Lutheran pastor and later as principal of a teacher training college. Education was very much in his blood - his father had been minister for education, and it was to this rather than to his ministry that he increasingly dedicated his time.
But politics was also to call him, and in 1957 he was elected to the Danish parliament as a liberal, becoming leader of the Liberal Party Group in 1965. He served as minister for foreign affairs in the coalition government formed in 1968, and following the elections in December 1973 was asked to form his own administration, although very much in a minority capacity. The liberals held only 22 seats in the 179-member parliament, and the coalition he put together was often far from the ideal of co-operation, cordiality and compromise to which he aspired.
Denmark was also severely affected by the energy crisis. The economic situation deteriorated and Poul Hartling called a general election in December 1974. Although his own party improved its position, he could not put a government together again and resigned the following month. He remained in parliament for another three years.
With the surprise early resignation of Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, Poul Hartling was presented as the Nordic candidate for the post of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He was elected by the UN General Assembly in December 1977, assuming office the following month.
At times appearing aloof and austere, he was nevertheless a deeply humane man and a complete humanitarian. He was not pretentious, had no false or deluded sense of self, and was as open with refugees as with UN staff members and their families.
The 1970s and early 1980s saw some major refugee relief programmes. Indochina was soon followed by Afghanistan, central America was in turmoil, and Africa was wracked by civil war and the struggle for liberation.
In south-east Asia, what had started as a trickle soon became a flood of refugees as Vietnam's "social restructuring" took its direct toll on the ethnic Chinese middle class, and as totalitarian, authoritarian and isolated governments in Cambodia and Laos repressed opposition and minority alike.
Nor were the friendly governments quite so friendly. Thailand resisted the influx and thousands were pushed back across the border. Poul Hartling's muted protest found little initial support in the West, and he himself was often the subject of bitter attack by local governments, for this was a time when Malaysia threatened to shoot boat people on sight.
However, he persisted, and with media focus and public support in North America, Europe and Australasia, governments rallied eventually to the cause. From 1979 onwards, a massive resettlement operation was to find homes for more than one million refugees from Indochina; an "orderly departure scheme" helped establish the first tentative steps towards the normalisation of relations with the refugees' country of origin; and special programmes for the resettlement of disabled refugees were developed and promoted.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan, where the Soviet invasion produced the largest single refugee exodus in the 20th century - some four and a half million fled to Pakistan and Iran - was dominated by different politics. There, UNHCR was called on to manage a massive relief operation driven by the ideology of the cold war. Protection and assistance programmes in other regions, however, such as central America or Africa, never attracted quite the same level of support, and by 1985 the UNHCR was in financial crisis.
Before he left office, Poul Hartling could nevertheless look back on a number of significant achievements, including the award, for the second time, of the Nobel Peace Prize to UNHCR in 1981. He made it clear that he accepted this prize, not only for the refugees of the world, but also on behalf of each and every UNHCR staff member.
Then as now, protection for refugees frequently struggled against politics and over-zealous pragmatism. That Poul Hartling managed to unite humanity with practicality as often as he did is the mark of his success.
He married Elsebeth Kirkemann in 1940, and they had three sons and a daughter.
Poul Hartling: born 1914; died April, 2000