Joel Charny
Joel R. Charny is vice president for policy with Refugees International, a Washington-based humanitarian advocacy organisation. He has extensive experience in Asia for RI, Oxfam America and the U.N. Development Programme. He has managed and assessed emergency response and post-conflict recovery programmes in Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
Sri Lanka: Now what?
Author: Joel Charny
They did it. In 2006 the brothers Rajapaksa --- newly elected President Mahinda, Defense Secretary Gotabaya, and special adviser Basil --- set out to fulfill their campaign pledge and defeat the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam on the battlefield. Three years later, they succeeded, crushing one of the worlds longest standing and most brutal insurgencies and establishing central government military control over the entire island. ...
Author: Joel Charny
They did it. In 2006 the brothers Rajapaksa --- newly elected President Mahinda, Defense Secretary Gotabaya, and special adviser Basil --- set out to fulfill their campaign pledge and defeat the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam on the battlefield. Three years later, they succeeded, crushing one of the worlds longest standing and most brutal insurgencies and establishing central government military control over the entire island. ...
Obama's First 100 Days: A Humanitarian Perspective
Author: Joel Charny
Assessing President Obamas first 100 days in office is all the rage in the United States, especially given the high expectations created by his election and the ambitious agenda that he set for his new administration. But the mainstream media are unlikely to apply humanitarian criteria, so it is left to Refugees International to make an initial assessment. The President has changed the tenor of the U.S. approach to the world, and this has humanitarian ramifications. Obama, joined by Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of Defense Gates, has been stressing in multiple public settings the importance of development assistance, humanitarian aid, and diplomacy, in addition to military action, as tools for U.S. engagement and problem solving. The administrations special envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, has relentlessly emphasized the importance of addressing chronic poverty and the vulnerability of displaced people in both countries as part of the overall U.S strategy in the region. ...
Author: Joel Charny
Assessing President Obamas first 100 days in office is all the rage in the United States, especially given the high expectations created by his election and the ambitious agenda that he set for his new administration. But the mainstream media are unlikely to apply humanitarian criteria, so it is left to Refugees International to make an initial assessment. The President has changed the tenor of the U.S. approach to the world, and this has humanitarian ramifications. Obama, joined by Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of Defense Gates, has been stressing in multiple public settings the importance of development assistance, humanitarian aid, and diplomacy, in addition to military action, as tools for U.S. engagement and problem solving. The administrations special envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, has relentlessly emphasized the importance of addressing chronic poverty and the vulnerability of displaced people in both countries as part of the overall U.S strategy in the region. ...
Dadaab: Ground truth from N Zero
Author: Joel Charny
We were just stepping out of our vehicle in the far reaches of Hagadera, one of three camps that make up the sprawling Dadaab camp for Somali refugees in northeastern Kenya, when it became obvious that we had stumbled upon a pocket of misery. A man waved his arms, and starting shouting, No water! No water! As we walked into the area, a group quickly gathered and started the rapid fire explanation of their plight, with passionate interruptions and people struggling to be heard, testing the patience and talent of our guide, himself a refugee who arrived in Dadaab in 1992. As visitors from the outside world, in our case from Washington, D.C. and Refugees International, we had to hear their story. ...
Author: Joel Charny
We were just stepping out of our vehicle in the far reaches of Hagadera, one of three camps that make up the sprawling Dadaab camp for Somali refugees in northeastern Kenya, when it became obvious that we had stumbled upon a pocket of misery. A man waved his arms, and starting shouting, No water! No water! As we walked into the area, a group quickly gathered and started the rapid fire explanation of their plight, with passionate interruptions and people struggling to be heard, testing the patience and talent of our guide, himself a refugee who arrived in Dadaab in 1992. As visitors from the outside world, in our case from Washington, D.C. and Refugees International, we had to hear their story. ...
Sri Lanka: When the Whole World Isn't Watching
Author: Joel Charny
One of the harsh realities of the humanitarian field is that some crises capture public attention, while others do not. The patterns are rather rigid. Crises in Europe and the Middle East, especially Palestine, make headlines. Large-scale natural disasters, even in obscure places, attract interest due to the inherent human fascination with immense forces beyond our control. But crises due to complex political conflicts outside the zones of proven public engagement are doomed to obscurity, unless it rises to such a level that genocide (read another Holocaust) can be invoked. The contrast between Gaza and Sri Lanka prompts these observations. In Gaza, despite restrictions on international humanitarian and media access imposed by the Israelis, the whole world was watching, counting the civilian casualties minute-by-minute, while the global debate swirled on the legitimacy of Israeli and Hamas conduct in the light of international humanitarian law. The conflict and the suffering that it engendered were daily front page news. Now, with at least a temporary halt in hostilities, assessments of the damage in Gaza will proceed and donors will pledge millions of dollars for the rebuilding process. ...
Author: Joel Charny
One of the harsh realities of the humanitarian field is that some crises capture public attention, while others do not. The patterns are rather rigid. Crises in Europe and the Middle East, especially Palestine, make headlines. Large-scale natural disasters, even in obscure places, attract interest due to the inherent human fascination with immense forces beyond our control. But crises due to complex political conflicts outside the zones of proven public engagement are doomed to obscurity, unless it rises to such a level that genocide (read another Holocaust) can be invoked. The contrast between Gaza and Sri Lanka prompts these observations. In Gaza, despite restrictions on international humanitarian and media access imposed by the Israelis, the whole world was watching, counting the civilian casualties minute-by-minute, while the global debate swirled on the legitimacy of Israeli and Hamas conduct in the light of international humanitarian law. The conflict and the suffering that it engendered were daily front page news. Now, with at least a temporary halt in hostilities, assessments of the damage in Gaza will proceed and donors will pledge millions of dollars for the rebuilding process. ...
The rhetoric of a "humanitarian crisis"
Author: Joel Charny
Crises are the stock and trade of humanitarian agencies. Yet there is no consensus or clarity in the emergency response field as to what constitutes a humanitarian crisis. In a saturated global media environment, the temptation is great for agencies to designate particular situations as humanitarian crises to get attention to a neglected group of vulnerable people or to stigmatize the responsible parties. The rhetorical leaps from difficult situation to humanitarian crisis to massive humanitarian crisis to the worlds worst humanitarian crisis are as easy as skipping over a puddle. In the absence of clinical definitions, the challenge for Refugees International and other groups that engage in humanitarian advocacy is to maintain discipline and consistency in the way we use language. For example, RI recently declared Somalia the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world. We had a brief internal debate prior to issuing a statement to this effect. While there are certainly other large-scale complex emergencies, including those in Afghanistan, Darfur and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we were able to agree that Somalia embodies a unique combination of large-scale vulnerability coupled with violence and internal chaos at a level that is preventing any sustained humanitarian response despite heroic efforts, mainly by Somalis themselves. The fundamental criteria we apply, admittedly unscientifically, are the scale of the emergency and the gap between the needs and the response. ...
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Author: Joel Charny
Crises are the stock and trade of humanitarian agencies. Yet there is no consensus or clarity in the emergency response field as to what constitutes a humanitarian crisis. In a saturated global media environment, the temptation is great for agencies to designate particular situations as humanitarian crises to get attention to a neglected group of vulnerable people or to stigmatize the responsible parties. The rhetorical leaps from difficult situation to humanitarian crisis to massive humanitarian crisis to the worlds worst humanitarian crisis are as easy as skipping over a puddle. In the absence of clinical definitions, the challenge for Refugees International and other groups that engage in humanitarian advocacy is to maintain discipline and consistency in the way we use language. For example, RI recently declared Somalia the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world. We had a brief internal debate prior to issuing a statement to this effect. While there are certainly other large-scale complex emergencies, including those in Afghanistan, Darfur and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we were able to agree that Somalia embodies a unique combination of large-scale vulnerability coupled with violence and internal chaos at a level that is preventing any sustained humanitarian response despite heroic efforts, mainly by Somalis themselves. The fundamental criteria we apply, admittedly unscientifically, are the scale of the emergency and the gap between the needs and the response. ...
