Washington, August 16: Former Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon who became a voice for millions of refugees has died of skin cancer at the age of 64, says Refugees International.
Bacon died on Saturday morning from an aggressive melanoma that spread to his brain, the group said in a statement.
He became president of Refugees International, a Washington-based advocacy group, in 2001.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Bacon, who was spokesman during the Clinton administration, a great humanitarian leader.
Bacon joined the Clinton administration in 1994 as assistant secretary of defense for public affairs after a long career as a Wall Street Journal reporter and editor.
During US and NATO operations in Kosovo, he grew convinced that more people were needed to stop human rights abuses and assist people displaced by man-made and natural disasters.
When he was at Refugees International, the group doubled in size and advocated for increased protection and assistance for displaced people in places such as Sudan’s Darfur region and Iraq, as well as in Afghanistan, DR Congo, Colombia, Thailand and Myanmar.
—–Agencies