The National Committee on North Korea

Joel R. Charny

NCNK Membership Committee Co-Chair

Vice President for Policy
Refugees International

Working Groups

Human Security

Expertise

- Humanitarian Emergencies

- Refugees

Background

Joel R. Charny has conducted assessments of the situations of North Koreans living in China and South Korea.

Biography

Joel R. Charny is Vice President for Policy of Refugees International. He is responsible for overseeing the policy and advocacy program of the organization. In his tenure with Refugees International he has 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, and Indonesia and Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the tsunami. He is Co-Chair of the Protection Working Group of InterAction.

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 and Forced Migration Review. He has a Masters degree in international education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Views expressed by individual National Committee on North Korea members are their own and should not be attributed to the National Committee itself. With the exception of statements that have been approved by the membership, NCNK does not advocate particular policies or take positions on issues.

Organizations are listed for identification purposes only.