Ted Henry, who has died in Belfast aged 79, spent a lifetime in the service of the United Nations and its related agencies.
Born in Tandragee, Co Armagh, he studied business methods and company law before applying for a post with the newly created United Nations organisation as the second World War was ending. He was assigned first to the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which had been set up to try to deal with the enormous problem of refugees and displaced persons in Europe.
Based at the UNRRA headquarters in Frankfort, he helped mount programmes of assistance in the Netherlands, France and Germany, where one of his harrowing tasks was to help the freed inmates of the Nazi concentration camp at Belsen on their first steps towards rebuilding their lives.
In 1949, in the aftermath of the Jewish-Arab war following the foundation of the state of Israel, he moved to Beirut with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNWRA). He spent more than four years based in the Lebanon working with Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip, Jordan and Syria.
In the early 1950s he transferred to UNICEF, the UN children's fund. Based in New York, he travelled widely on missions to Brazil and other parts of Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, India, Pakistan and elsewhere. His experience with UNICEF, which also included a two-year spell based in Congo-Brazzaville, prompted a deep interest in the economic and social problems confronting Third World countries that was to dominate the rest of his UN career. He left UNICEF in the early 1970s to take up a post with the UN Economic Commission for Africa in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. His years there saw the culmination of the revolution and the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie.
He then moved to the UN's International Trade Centre in Geneva, working on the provision of technical assistance to developing countries around the world. After his retirement he continued to live in Geneva and to work on special tasks for various UN agencies.
About 15 years ago he returned to take up residence in Northern Ireland. He is survived by his widow, Margaret, whom he married in 1946, and who was his companion on his many postings around the world.
D.K.