Hisashi Owada has been a judge on the International Court of Justice since 2002 and is the former President and Director of the Japan Institute of International Affairs. He is the former Ambassador, retired Permanent Representative of Japan to the United Nations. A career diplomat, he began his distinguished career in foreign affairs when he joined the foreign service of Japan in 1955. In 1971, he was appointed private secretary to the minister of foreign affairs, and subsequently held positions as minister at the Japanese embassies in Washington and Moscow, ambassador of Japan to the OECD in Paris, and vice-minister for Foreign Affairs. Concurrent with his professional activities in foreign affairs, Ambassador Owada has taught for over twenty-five years at Tokyo University, and has held visiting professorships at Harvard, Columbia, and New York universities. Ambassador Owada graduated from Tokyo University and continued his post-graduate studies at Cambridge University in England. Ambassador Owada is the author of numerous publications on international political, economic and legal affairs. Among his major publications in English are The Practice of Japan in the Field of International Law, The Implications for Japan-EC Relations and Japanese Perspective on Asian Security. Ambassador Owada was a faculty member for various Salzburg Global Seminar Sessions and served on the Board of Directors from 1993-1997.