Responding to the Challenge

Welcome back.

Thank you very much, it's a great pleasure. It is quite exciting.

We talked seven years ago on the occasion of your last visit to the campus [in 1992]. A lot has changed in your job and the world since then. What prepared you for this formidable job you have in today's world? What were the formative experiences that shaped Sadako Ogata?

I would say graduate school is not irrelevant. The preparation -- I think this is a good thing to recognize as I visit a university.

From my rather prolonged graduate student days, there are two subjects I would recommend very much for preparation for a variety of careers. One is history. It is very important that we know history. I don't mind which history, but a historical perspective is very important in preparing somebody who has to deal with a society and human beings. The other one is theories. We had to write a lot of papers in graduate school. The theoretical, analytical power is also very useful. So I would say graduate school: history for the perspective and theory for the analysis.

When you were thrust into this position [in 1991] just after the Cold War ended, you were in a place to experiment with all our ideas about theory and action and how they go together. What have you learned in these eight years about what happens when you apply these theories to the real world?

You do have to make decisions, and there it is not only history and theories. These are preparation; but you do [act on] something of a gut feeling. You just have to decide. I think before deciding, it is important that you listen to a lot of colleagues who come up with recommendations and advice, but at the end you do have to decide. You are never sure, but [you hope that] the decision will be in a direction that will protect refugees.

In these past eight years, you have been presented with a lot of dilemmas where you have had to ask yourself that question again and again.

Well, of course there are the dilemmas. But I sometimes say to my colleagues, "We are not Hamlets. We cannot just brood over dilemmas." You do have to judge and come up with pretty quick decisions, whether or not they lead to more protection or more chances for really protecting people.

Where did this self-confidence come from? What in your background made you that way?

I don't know.

What about the persistence? In your work you have to keep at it as things unravel.

Because there is nobody else. In this kind of work there are many international agencies, nongovernmental agencies, many people in the field, but when you are really given the mandate to protect refugees you cannot give up, and I think our greatest satisfaction -- and I always say ours, because it is not just me but a lot of colleagues, especially those on the ground who are doing this -- is if they can make the right judgment in a way that can make a little difference for the better for the people. That is a great success, and that satisfaction carries a long way.

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