Joel R. Charny is Vice President for Humanitarian Policy and Practice at InterAction, the alliance of U.S.-based relief and development organizations. He is responsible for leading InterAction’s work on humanitarian response, which involves engaging with the U.S. government, the United Nations, and member non-governmental organizations on both practical and policy matters, including funding availability, impact and effectiveness, and reform efforts in the sector.
Prior to joining InterAction in October 2010, Mr. Charny was the Vice President for Policy with Refugees International, a Washington-based humanitarian advocacy organization. In his tenure with Refugees International he conducted humanitarian assessment missions to Pakistan in the aftermath of 9/11, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, the Chinese border with North Korea, Indonesia and Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the tsunami, the Central African Republic, Burma, Syria, Kenya and Sudan.
Mr. Charny joined Refugees International in July 2000 after working for four years in Cambodia as Deputy Program Manager with the CARERE project of the United Nations Development Program. Prior to working for the UNDP in Cambodia, Mr. Charny spent sixteen years with Oxfam America, a relief and development organization based in Boston. He first worked inside Cambodia during the famine emergency there in 1980 and went on to manage the agency’s work in Southeast Asia and the wider Asia region. In 1989 he became Overseas Director and in 1994 Policy Director.
Mr. Charny is the author of Acts of Betrayal: The Challenge of Protecting North Korean Refugees in China, published by Refugees International in 2005. He is also the author of articles on humanitarian issues in volumes published by Kumerian Press and the Brookings Institution, as well as articles for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Economist, The Asian Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, Forced Migration Review, and Harvard International Review.
He has an A.B degree in European History from Brown University and a Masters degree in international education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
March 16, 2011
Japan is a wealthy, industrialized nation, renowned for preparing for disasters. But the devastation from last week’s earthquake and tsunami has proved to be too much for even Japan. The scenes of destruction and human misery are provoking a worldwide urge to act.
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December 19, 2011
By Joel Charny, vice preisdent for humanitarian policy & practice, InterAction. Originally posted on Dec. 16, 2011, on the Guardian's development blog, Poverty Matters.
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Barely mentioned at South Sudan's international engagement talks this week, NGOs have spent decades forging ties in the country. But they will have to adjust to new realities.
The South Sudan international engagement...
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April 15, 2011
*Originally appeared in The Guardian's global development blog, Poverty Matters, on April 13, 2011.*
By Joel Charny
After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the prevailing analysis was that the traditional pillars of relief response – UN agencies, large international NGOs and the Red Cross – were becoming irrelevant in the face of a vast array of new aid providers, including corporations,...
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February 10, 2011
Originally posted on the ALNAP Blog.
InterAction, the alliance of U.S.-based nongovernmental organizations involved in international relief and development, prepares its Foreign Assistance Briefing Book (aka the FABB) biannually to coincide with the January arrival of a new Congress. The second version was released last month into a radically different environment than the first. The potential for...
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Working Groups are a central part of the way InterAction supports and aids its members. Working Groups are first and foremost a place for member agencies to share information that is important to them in several ways:
- by providing a way for member organizations to share information about field-based issues, concerns, and topics;
- by serving as a place for members to receive training and to share best practices with each other; and
- by offering a space for members to develop new products and materials on a given topic.
Working Groups are member driven and supported by InterAction staff (with the exception of a few non-staffed working groups). Members identify an interest, issue area, or need around which they feel their collective voices will clarify or strengthen responses. Depending on the number of member organizations interested, a meeting or consultation is planned to explore the topic and allow members to share their issues and concerns. Such consultations or exploratory meetings may lead to the formation of an on-going Working Group.
InterAction's current working groups are described below. For more information on a specific working group, contact the group's staff contact.
| Group | Description | Staff Contact |
|---|---|---|
| Transparency |
This group currently only functions as an email list and is for those interested in transparency/open data efforts by NGOs and the U.S. government. |
Laia Grino |
| HPPC--SYRIA |
this is a working for Syria |
Abby Bruell |
| SIT--Transparency |
SIT--ransparency |
Laia Grino |
| Shelter and Settlements Working Group |
InterAction Shelter And Settlements Working Group |
Mohamed Hilmi |
| Allen-test-group |
this is a test group |
Allen Abtahi |
| InterAction Business Council |
Promoting and leveraging corporate and NGO partnerships for sustainable and inclusive international development and economic growth. |
Luisa Cordoba |
| HPPC--Humanitarian Policy and Partnerships Working Group |
HPPC--Humanitarian Policy and Partnerships Working Group |
Abby Bruell |
| SIT--Aid Effectiveness-Members |
SIT--Aid Effectiveness-Members |
Kimberly Darter |
| HPPC--Horn of Africa |
HPPC--Horn of Africa |
Lucy de los Reyes |