Sadako Ogata

Sadako Ogata, née Nakamura (緒方 貞子, Ogata Sadako; 16 September 1927 – 22 October 2019), was a Japanese academic, diplomat, author, administrator, and professor emerita at the Roman Catholic Sophia University. She was widely known as the head of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from 1991 to 2000, as well as in her capacities as Chair of the UNICEF Executive Board from 1978 to 1979 and as President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) from 2003 to 2012. She also served as Advisor of the Executive Committee of the Japan Model United Nations (JMUN).

She was born on 16 September 1927 to a career diplomat father Toyoichi Nakamura (who became in 1943 the Japanese ambassador to Finland) and her original name was Sadako Nakamura. Her mother was a daughter of Foreign Minister Kenkichi Yoshizawa and granddaughter of Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi, who was assassinated when she was four years old, due to his opposition to Japanese militarism, whose assassination marked the end of civilian control over the Japanese military until after World War II.

She was born in Tokyo, Japan and, due to her father's profession, she lived in the U.S. (she attended the Catlin Gabel School in Portland) from 4 to 8 years old, also lived in China from 8 to 10 during the Japanese occupation when her father was Japanese consul in Guangzhou and Hong Kong before the family went back to Japan. She stayed in Japan during World War II and after the war, she graduated from the University of the Sacred Heart in Tokyo with a bachelor's degree in English Literature. Though it was not common for a Japanese woman to study abroad at that time, she dared to study at Georgetown University and its Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, earning a master's degree in International Relations. She wanted to study the reason why Japan entered a reckless aggression war, which was not put a brake on after the assassination of her great-grandfather, Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi. She was awarded a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1963, after she completed a dissertation on the politics behind the foundation of Manchukuo. The study analyzed the causes of the Japanese invasion of China. As for her personal life, in 1960 she married Shijuro Ogata and her name changed from Sadako Nakamura to Sadako Ogata. In 1965, she became Lecturer at International Christian University in Tokyo. After 1980, she taught international politics at Sophia University in Tokyo as a professor and later became Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Studies until her departure to join the UNHCR in 1991.

Ogata was appointed to Japan's UN mission in 1968, on the recommendation of Fusae Ichikawa, a female member of the House of Councillors of Japan, who was an activist of the women's suffrage in Japan since the 1920s and had a high opinion of Ogata's character & ability. Ogata represented Japan at several sessions of the UN General Assembly in 1970. In addition, she served from 1978 to 1979 as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary for the permanent mission of Japan to the UN, and as Chair of the UNICEF Executive Board.

In 1990, she was appointed as head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). She was the first woman to be appointed as a head of the UNHCR. She left Sophia University to start her new position at UNHCR. Her presumed term at UNHCR was only three years, which was the remaining term of her predecessor who had left after only one year, but she continued to be assigned. She was re-elected twice (in November 1993 and in September 1998), and served, over a decade, until 2001.

As head of the UNHCR, she implemented effective strategies and helped countless refugees escape from despair, including Kurdish refugees after the Gulf War, refugees in the Yugoslav Wars, refugees in the Rwandan genocide, and Afghan refugees including victims of Cold War. In the face of Kurdish refugees at the border between Turkey and Iraq, Ogata expanded the mandate of UNHCR to include the protection of internally displaced persons (IDPs). She was a practical leader who deployed military forces in the humanitarian operations, for example at the siege of Sarajevo, the Airlift Operations in cooperation with some European air forces during the Bosnian War. During the period, the budget and the staff in UNHCR more than doubled.

Her formidable negotiating skills and petite stature earned her the nickname of "diminutive giant."

After UNHCR leader, in 2001, she became co-chairperson of UN Human Security Commission.