Profile
緒方貞子（おがた さだこ、1927-2019）は、日本人・女性として初めて国連難民高等弁務官を務めた国際政治学者。湾岸戦争のクルド難民危機や旧ユーゴ紛争、ルワンダ難民危機の現場に立ち続け、後にJICA理事長として「人間の安全保障」の考え方を国際協力の現場に根づかせた。
Sadako Ogata was born on September 16, 1927, in Tokyo’s Azabu ward (now part of Minato City), the eldest daughter of diplomat Toyoichi Nakamura and his wife Tsuneko. Her great-grandfather was Tsuyoshi Inukai, the prime minister assassinated in the May 15 Incident of 1932. Following her father’s diplomatic postings, she spent much of her childhood abroad, in San Francisco and Berkeley in the United States and in Guangdong and Hong Kong in China. After graduating from the University of the Sacred Heart, she earned a master’s degree from Georgetown University and a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. She became an associate professor at International Christian University in 1974 and a professor at Sophia University in 1980, while also serving in international roles such as Japan’s representative to the UN General Assembly, chair of the UNICEF Executive Board, and Japan’s representative to the UN Commission on Human Rights.
In February 1991, Ogata took office as UN High Commissioner for Refugees — the first Japanese national and the first woman to hold the post. She stepped into the role just as the Gulf War had triggered a mass exodus of Kurdish refugees from northern Iraq, and made the unprecedented decision to extend UNHCR protection to internally displaced people who had not crossed a national border. Over her ten years in office, she remained at the front lines of one crisis after another born of the post-Cold War era — the wars in the former Yugoslavia, the 1994 Rwandan refugee crisis, and the Afghan refugee crisis — often traveling into conflict zones in a bulletproof vest or by helicopter, insisting on seeing conditions firsthand. Her relentless drive, in striking contrast to her small physical stature, earned her the nickname “the small giant.” She stepped down as High Commissioner in December 2000.
After leaving UNHCR, Ogata co-chaired the United Nations Commission on Human Security from 2001 alongside Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen. In May 2003, the commission submitted its report, “Human Security Now,” to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, arguing that security should center not on states but on protecting the survival, livelihood, and dignity of every individual. That October she became president of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), a post she held until March 2012, working to embed the concept of human security in Japan’s development assistance work on the ground. She died on October 22, 2019, at the age of 92. Her books include “My Work: Ten Years as UN High Commissioner for Refugees and Building Peace,” and her insistence on staying close to the field continues to guide people working in international cooperation today.