Small, shy professor restored leadership to UN’s refugee agency at a time of crisis
Sadako Ogata, who has died aged 92, was the popular head of the United Nations refugee agency from 1991 to 2000, when she won widespread praise for her dynamic leadership of the underfunded organisation during the most testing period of its existence.
The first woman to be appointed as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), she emerged as the leading defender of the UN system in trouble spots as far-flung as the Congo, East Timor and the former Yugoslavia. Small in stature, grey-haired, plainly dressed and ostensibly shy, she proved a strong decision-maker, and at one time was considered a contender to succeed Boutros
Boutros-Ghali as
UN secretarygeneral.
When she first arrived, the agency was badly demoralised. One recent former commissioner, Jean-Pierre Hocke, had departed under a cloud of scandal, and his successor, Thorvald Stoltenberg, had resigned within months. The appointment of a professor of international relations from a little-known Japanese university seemed unlikely to dispel the gloom.
Three days after her arrival, Ogata was confronted with her first emergency: the sudden exodus of 1.5 million Kurds fleeing from Saddam Hussein’s forces into Turkey and Iran. Turkey was pushing them back, while Iran had few facilities and was reluctant to allow in the international relief agencies.
Ogata acted swiftly. The only option, she decided, was to convince the refugees to return to Iraq, where the UN would take care of their basic needs for food, fuel, medicines and security. It was the genesis of the ‘‘safe haven’’ concept. She also travelled to Tehran to negotiate for the aid agencies to be allowed to run the makeshift refugee camps on the borders with Iraq. Suspicious Iranian officials soon realised that here was someone with whom they could do business, the Tehran Times describing her approvingly as ‘‘the diminutive giant’’.
The crisis in Iraq was followed by those in Yugoslavia, Ethiopia, Somalia, Burundi and Rwanda, where a quarter of a million people fled in one day.
Ogata set up new procedures to enable the agency to respond to crises within hours, and she insisted on a flexible interpretation of the UN Convention on Refugees so that the agency could help the internally displaced – victims of ‘‘ethnic cleansing’’ – as well as people who had crossed international borders. She also campaigned for the UNHCR to be allowed to engage in ‘‘preventive humanitarian actions’’, not waiting until people had become refugees but intervening to prevent an exodus.
She did not flinch from criticising the Security Council when she felt it necessary, reprimanding it in 1993 for using the humanitarian aid effort in Bosnia as a fig-leaf for political indecision. Her unilateral decision the same year to suspend all relief to Bosnia, at a time when both the Bosnian government and Serbian nationalists were obstructing deliveries to the besieged town of Srebrenica, so angered Boutros-Ghali that he slapped her down. But within five days the Bosnians allowed the relief through.
Between 1991 and 1996 the number of refugees worldwide rose from 17 million to 27m, about 12m of them in Africa, putting huge strain on the UNHCR’s budget, some 95 per cent of which is met by voluntary donations, mostly from governments. Though the agency remained under-resourced, Ogata successfully shamed the international community into donating ever-increasing funds.
In Hollywood fundraising circles she became known as ‘‘the Refugee Babe’’ for her success in charming celebrities into providing financial support for her cause.
And despite all the calls on her energies, she found time to decree that 20,000 dogs deserved to be transported as part of the
UNHCR’s repatriation of 370,000 refugees from camps in Thailand to Cambodia.
She was born Sadako Nakamura in Tokyo. Her father, Toyoichi Nakamura, was a diplomat and her mother, Tsuneko Yoshizawa, was the granddaughter of a prime minister.
As a child Sadako spent much of her childhood abroad, moving with her father’s postings to the United States, China and Hong Kong. Returning to Tokyo, she attended the International School of the Sacred Heart, and was there when the city was firebombed during World War II.
After taking a degree in English literature at an affiliated university, she took a master’s degree at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Washington, and a PhD in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley.
Returning to Japan, she married Shijiro Ogata, who would become a prominent banker, had two children and began a career at Sophia University in Tokyo. In 1968 she was appointed to the Japanese delegation to the UN General Assembly session, returning for the 1970 session.
Soon she was given ambassadorial status, followed by a series of special jobs for the UN secretary-general. She did refugee work under the auspices of the UN in Burma, headed a Japanese mission to provide relief to Cambodian refugees in Thailand, and became Japan’s first representative to the UN Commission on Human Rights.
By the time Stoltenberg resigned, she had become an obvious candidate for election to the high commissioner’s job, though she claimed to have agreed to stand only because she did not think she had a chance.
Much was made of the fact that she was the first woman to lead the UNHCR, but she rejected tokenism, rarely accepting invitations to speak to women’s organisations.
After retiring from the UNHCR, she became president of the Japan International Co-operation Agency, which provides aid to developing countries. In 2002 she turned down an offer from the prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, to become foreign minister.
Ogata’s husband died in 2014. Their son and daughter survive her. –
She did not flinch from criticising the Security Council ... reprimanding it in 1993 for using the humanitarian aid effort in Bosnia as a fig-leaf for political indecision.