William H. Draper, Jr.

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William H. Draper II wiki (died in 1974)

"Major General William H. Draper, Jr., a founder in 1965 and later chair of the Population Crisis Committee (now Population Action International). Following retirement from the U.S. Army, Gen. Draper served as Undersecretary of the Army during the Truman Administration and played key roles in the post-World War II reconstruction of Europe and Japan, led by U.S. Secretary of State (and retired General of the Army) George C. Marshall. In 1952–53, William Draper served with the rank of ambassador as United States Special Representative in Europe. Asked by President Eisenhower in 1958 to lead a commission studying U.S. military assistance, he became convinced of the strategic necessity of addressing long-term population growth, and spent the remainder of his life persuading a succession of U.S. presidents and Congress to support the global expansion of voluntary family planning services. A major fundraiser for the International Planned Parenthood Foundation, Gen. Draper later secured U.S. government support for the establishment of the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (unfpa, later renamed the United Nations Population Fund). He is credited with the idea of making the UN World Conference on Population, held in Bucharest in 1974, a meeting of governments aimed at shaping global policy, rather than one in which demographers and other experts simply discussed population. The Bucharest conference led eventually to the historic International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994 and its Programme of Action, agreed to by 179 governments, a lasting legacy for William Draper’s lifetime of service." [1]

His son is William H. Draper III .

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References

  1. The Security Demoraphic, Population Action International, accessed October 1, 2009.