1995年2月、南キブ州ブカブに逃れてきたルワンダ難民と緒方貞子 国連難民高等弁務官
© UNHCR/Panos Moumtzis
2020年11月2日に開催された『緒方貞子元JICA理事長追悼記念シンポジウム「With/Postコロナ時代のグローバルな課題と人間の安全保障」』(JICA主催)に、フィリッポ・グランディ国連難民高等弁務官がメッセージを寄せました。
緒方さんが高等弁務官だった90年代、共に働き、現場で難民たちと向き合う姿を見てきたグランディ高等弁務官。日本では国際的な場での活躍がよく知られる緒方さんでしたが、実は自身が日本人であることに大きな誇りを抱いていたといいます。
そんな緒方さんが提唱し続けた「人間の安全保障」が意味すること、難民問題の解決に向けて今私たちにできること、ぜひご覧ください。
▶緒方貞子 元国連難民高等弁務官についてはこちら
Dear friends in Japan,
It is an honour to participate today – even if just remotely – in this memorial symposium.
It is humbling to speak not only alongside such distinguished speakers, but also to present a few reflections on just some of the countless achievements and legacies of one of my predecessors as UN High Commissioner for Refugees, whom I also have the honour of calling my mentor and personal friend, Sadako Ogata.
She felt a deep compassion for those suffering and deprived of their human rights and dignity. She was as comfortable and effective speaking to the Security Council or with world leaders as she was sitting with refugees in a camp, listening to their plight and helping find solutions to their challenges.
She rarely flinched in a crisis, even when she was in the midst of active conflict, as she did so often in the Balkans, or the Great Lakes of Africa, and many other places.
And she would have been aghast at the ‘me first’ and “my country first” rhetoric, or the duplicitous representation by some politicians of refugees as abusers and threats, instead of explaining that they are just people – like you and me – but unjustly forced to flee their homes due to conflict or persecution.
She recognized back then that the global character of the challenges we face – like the climate emergency, poverty, or a pandemic – require cooperation and a collective response.
She also understood and said – ahead of many others – that there are no humanitarian solutions to political crises like conflict and war and that a different approach was needed. She advocated strongly for development actors to be engaged at the beginning of a crisis. Ahead of time, she grasped that all elements of the international response to crises – political, human rights, humanitarian, and development – must work closely together for those crises to be addressed in an effective and sustainable manner.
This is the crux of the ‘human security’ approach that she championed decades ago.
It took more than twenty years for this to translate into mainstream aid discussions and initiatives. With the exodus of one million people to Europe in 2015 – 16 – an exodus rooted in political and aid failures – decision makers around the world understood that crises (and especially crisis of forced displacement) needed different responses, much along the lines Mrs Ogata had proposed years before.
This led for example to the affirmation by the United Nations General Assembly of the Global Compact on Refugees in 2018, which ushered in a new approach to responding to displacement. A whole of society response that brought together governments, humanitarian and development actors, the private sector, and others to help the displaced and their host communities, and to share the burden and responsibility more widely across the international arena.
JICA and the Government of Japan have been a key and longstanding partner of UNHCR in this approach, which is very much in line with Mrs Ogata’s visionary appeal from decades ago. I trust that this strong support will continue now and into the future.
As I close, I hope you will permit me to share a personal story. Mrs Ogata was a multilateralist, and an internationalist for sure, but was profoundly attached to her country and proud to be Japanese.
At the end of my first visit to Japan with her, we were flying back to Geneva and she asked about my impressions. She asked ‘did you start,’ she said ‘to understand that geography and history made us – Japan – a lonely country? We,’ she added, ‘can only thrive if we play an international role in making peace, and support stronger humanitarian and development responses’.
That was her dream for Japan, and for the world. She would certainly like this approach to continue today, and not be weakened by any considerations, especially at this time of pandemic, when the most vulnerable people in the world – among whom are the refugees and the displaced – are likely to pay the biggest price.
Thank you.