James Charles Ingram, February 27, 1928 - February 15, 2023, was the director of the World Food Program

His professional career reached its peak when he was appointed Executive Director of the World Food Program, with the personal rank of UN Under-Secretary General. He is the only Australian to have headed a UN organisation at that level. His book, Bread and Stones - Leadership and the Struggle to Reform the United Nations World Food Program, provides a handbook and inspiration for those who, like him, seek to make the UN system live up to its great ideals.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Ingram tackled all of his appointments with determined reforming zeal. As he himself admitted he was not an easy man to work for, as many of those who worked for him attest, especially early in the mornings. But as those who did so agree, he was a first-class thinker, and once you got to know him, an excellent friend and wise advisor.

Ingram's first diplomatic appointment was to Tel Aviv (1950 to 1953), following his marriage to Odette Koven, but unlike many in that posting, he never became an unquestioning supporter of the country's government. Indeed, he developed an enduring concern for the wellbeing and rights of the Palestinian people.

Subsequent postings were to Washington DC (1956 to 1959), where he built a solid appreciation and knowledge of the complex workings of the American polity. This saw the beginning of a lifelong questioning of the sort of relationship that Australia should have with the USA. In later life, Ingram was critical of America's forceful foreign policy.

In Brussels (1959 to 1960) he was responsible as Charge d'Affaires for setting up Australia's Mission to the then-European Economic Community and Australia's Embassy in Belgium. He then went to Jakarta (1962 to 1964), in a tumultuous period in Indonesian history; followed by the Australian Mission to the United Nations, where he gained an enduring but sceptical familiarity with the UN system and its senior officers. On return to Canberra, Ingram was appointed Assistant Secretary in the Department for Foreign Affairs with oversight variously of Australia's relationships with the countries of East and South Asia, the Americas, the South Pacific and of the Asia Pacific Council.

In 1970, Ingram was appointed Australian ambassador to the Philippines, where he saw firsthand the difficulties faced by a developing country that had inherited the best and worst features of its Spanish and American colonial inheritances. In 1973, he was appointed Australian High Commissioner to Canada, observing closely the reforms of Pearson and his leadership on North/South relationships, including through the creation of the Canadian International Development Assistance Agency and its sister organisation the International Development Research Centre of Canada. This planted seeds for his thinking on comparable reforms to Australia's aid structures. He was concurrently non-resident High Commissioner to the then newly independent Caribbean nations of Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana and the Bahamas, and was Australia's representative on the newly established but now defunct International Bauxite Association.

This rich experience melded nicely with Ingram's deep, personal commitment to equity, efficiency and international peace through economic development. The opportunity to put this varied bilateral and multilateral experience into practice came with his appointment, in 1975, as head of Australia's international development assistance program. He had a staff cobbled together from several aid administration departments and agencies, and an organisational structure and resources inadequate to meet the expectations of the Whitlam government. He saw aid and trade as critical components of Australia's foreign policy, but felt aid was not being given adequate priority by the higher echelons of the Department of Foreign Affairs, or by its minister. Jointly with Sir John Crawford, and supported by some lateral recruits to the organisation with wide ranging backgrounds, he worked to improve the quality of Australia's bilateral aid program and increase support for selected multilateral aid organisations. His bilateral focus was on aid to Indonesia, the Philippines and the South Pacific. Backed by Crawford, he carefully steered a course between politicians, scientists, bureaucrats and state governments that led to the creation in 1982 of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR). The Centre is still seen as a jewel in the crown of the Australian aid program and attracts continuing bipartisan political support. It reflects Ingram's ambition for more effective utilisation of CSIRO and State and Territory departments of agriculture, as well as the educational and research resources of Australian universities and colleges. These were also tapped through the Australian Asian Universities and Colleges Scheme - later to become IDP Education Australia.

Recognising that he was unlikely to be offered another sufficiently interesting foreign affairs posting as head of mission, Ingram then sought a senior appointment within the United Nations and drew on his global network of contacts to lobby for appointment as head of the World Food Program (WFP). He charmed Saouma, the then-head of the FAO, and also persuaded the United States to support his appointment. His appointment for a second term is described in Bread and Stones and includes what he describes as "a candid description of the struggle for reform of the WFP". His successors in that post have, publicly and privately, heaped praise on his reform efforts.

In a foreword to Bread and Stones, the Hon. Gareth Evans wrote: "The World Food Program is now not only the world's biggest humanitarian agency, but one of its most respected and effective. That it became so is very much the legacy of Jim Ingram."

In retirement, Ingram maintained a lively interest in international development and in Australian foreign policy. He was active in the Australian Institute of International Affairs, the Crawford Fund, the ANU's Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy. He also established the Ingram Fund for International Development in Law as a permanent endowment in the Faculty of Law of the University of New South Wales. In 2014, he was appointed as Patron of the Crawford Fund.

In the later years of his life, Ingram lunched regularly with former colleagues, enjoying discussions of contemporary foreign policy issues. Under Ingram's leadership, his lunch group made a submission to the Richardson Review of the Australian aid program in 2018.

Jim and wife Odette, who died on May 20, 2021, are succeeded by two daughters and a son.

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