The ‘diminutive giant’ who helped millions of refugees

When Sadako Ogata became the first woman to head the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in 1991, many in the U.N. thought the Japanese academic was too meek and self-effacing to be an effective leader. Ogata immediately proved them wrong. With millions of Iraqi Kurds fleeing from the forces of Saddam Hussein, Ogata changed the U.N.’s rules to help refugees displaced internally as well as those who crossed international borders. She then prevailed on Iran and Turkey, both of which had been turning the Kurds away, to let the U.N. set up “safe havens” on their borders— and persuaded Iraq to not attack the camps. Paying tribute to her diplomatic skills, the Tehran Times referred to Ogata—who stood just under 5 feet tall— as “the diminutive giant.” Born in Tokyo to a diplomat father, she spent her early years in the U.S., Hong

Kong, and China and later became a professor of international relations at Japan’s Sophia University, said

The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). She was appointed to the Japanese delegation to the U.N. General Assembly in 1968 and was soon tasked with handling “a series of special jobs for the U.N. secretary-general.”

As head of UNHCR until 2000, Ogata “oversaw refugee operations during a time of ravaging conflict,” said The New York Times. She responded to those fleeing bloodshed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, and East Timor, as well as in Iraq, and often visited war zones to witness people’s plight. “She was unafraid to criticize her own country’s poor record on accepting refugees”—last year, Japan let in only 42. “If Japan doesn’t open a door,” she said in 2016, “it’s against human rights.”