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Fred Cuny
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Fred Cuny
Frederick C. Cuny (November 14, 1944 – disappeared April 15, 1995) was an American humanitarian whose work spanned disaster relief, refugee emergency management, recovery from war and civil conflict, and peacebuilding. He was a practitioner, author, and a researcher. He has been described as “a great American – a sort of universal Schindler, a man with lists of millions of people in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe whose lives he succored or saved.” Beginning with Biafra and ending in Chechnya, he dedicated his career and his life to safeguarding vulnerable populations from disasters and protecting civilians caught in the maw of war.
Frederick "Fred" Charles Cuny was born in New Haven, Connecticut. The family moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana, and later to Dallas, Texas, when Cuny was eight, where he grew up during the early stages of the Vietnam War. He obtained a pilot license while still in high school. He enrolled in the military cadet program at Texas A&M University, left before graduating, and later transferred to Texas College of Arts and Industries in Kingsville. While at Kingsville, he became interested in humanitarian work after visiting low-income neighborhoods in Mexico and witnessing immigrant farm workers living in South Texas. He later attended the University of Houston where he studied urban planning and received a bachelor's degree in political science in 1967.
After graduation, he worked in the small town of Eagle Pass, Texas, on the Mexican border in a project funded under President Johnson's War on Poverty. There he developed solutions to long-standing infrastructure and public health problems. Essential to Cuny’s success was his approach to grassroots participation, which later became a defining feature of his approach to humanitarian aid projects. After that, Fred worked with the Carter and Burgess Engineering firm in Fort Worth, Texas, where he was assigned to the construction project of the Dallas Fort Worth airport.
Over his 26 year career, Cuny worked in crises in more than fifty countries, including Biafra, Guatemala, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Iraq, Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, and Chechnya.
In 1970, when the Bhola Cyclone struck East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), Cuny was hired by the British NGO Oxfam to serve as an advisor in East Pakistan. He later described this assignment as 'life-changing' because it was there that he was first 'immersed' in the international disaster relief system. Since Intertect, his consulting company, was wholly dependent on outside contracts, these entities often included the same people upon whom his livelihood depended. Oxfam called upon him again after the earthquake near Managua, Nicaragua, in 1972. Oxfam asked him to plan a camp for the earthquake survivors; he used shelter units by forming a cluster around common spaces. Oxfam requested Cuny's assistance again with reconstruction after the Guatemala earthquake in 1976. Oxfam and its partner NGO, World Neighbors, asked Cuny to conceptualize a strategy for housing reconstruction. He responded with an approach called "Programa Kuchuba'l". Instead of rushing in construction materials from outside the region, he used local materials.
During the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia, Cuny conducted assessments of famine victims who had fled to Sudan from areas of Ethiopia that were affected by protracted drought, war and famine. They settled in camps around Showak and in the UN Food and Agriculture Organization camps in eastern Sudan. During this period, Cuny arranged to provide food to those who voluntarily repatriated in spite of opposition from the US government and UN representatives. In 1986, Cuny led an interagency assessment in Ethiopia that included the review of backup supplies and food availability. However, he extended the assessment to examine dependency problems. As the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse, in 1992, Cuny and Intertect provided assessment and planning in Mongolia, and in areas of Georgia, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Dagestan and Chechnya.
Cuny began developing guidelines for camp management for refugees in 1970. He created his report on the Nicaragua camp plan in 1973. In 1979, Cuny was contracted to advise on the Kampuchean refugee camp in Thailand. Cuny's Assessment Manual for Refugee Emergencies informed USAID OFDA's set of guidelines; it is still in use as the Field Operations Guide. In 1991, the US military was called to provide humanitarian assistance but identified a problem of meeting the Kurds' needs in the mountains. Cuny was brought in to advise the US State Department and the military. Cuny proposed setting up safe zones in Northern Iraq and convincing the Kurds to return. The concept required establishing a humanitarian vanguard in Zakho, Iraq, still occupied by the Iraqi Army, and a series of demarches to the Iraqi military to withdraw. The operation was credited with saving thousands of lives.
Ambassador Marc Grossman, Deputy Chief of Mission in the US Embassy in Turkey at the time, recounted his involvement with what was known as Operation Provide Comfort:
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Fred Cuny
Frederick C. Cuny (November 14, 1944 – disappeared April 15, 1995) was an American humanitarian whose work spanned disaster relief, refugee emergency management, recovery from war and civil conflict, and peacebuilding. He was a practitioner, author, and a researcher. He has been described as “a great American – a sort of universal Schindler, a man with lists of millions of people in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe whose lives he succored or saved.” Beginning with Biafra and ending in Chechnya, he dedicated his career and his life to safeguarding vulnerable populations from disasters and protecting civilians caught in the maw of war.
Frederick "Fred" Charles Cuny was born in New Haven, Connecticut. The family moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana, and later to Dallas, Texas, when Cuny was eight, where he grew up during the early stages of the Vietnam War. He obtained a pilot license while still in high school. He enrolled in the military cadet program at Texas A&M University, left before graduating, and later transferred to Texas College of Arts and Industries in Kingsville. While at Kingsville, he became interested in humanitarian work after visiting low-income neighborhoods in Mexico and witnessing immigrant farm workers living in South Texas. He later attended the University of Houston where he studied urban planning and received a bachelor's degree in political science in 1967.
After graduation, he worked in the small town of Eagle Pass, Texas, on the Mexican border in a project funded under President Johnson's War on Poverty. There he developed solutions to long-standing infrastructure and public health problems. Essential to Cuny’s success was his approach to grassroots participation, which later became a defining feature of his approach to humanitarian aid projects. After that, Fred worked with the Carter and Burgess Engineering firm in Fort Worth, Texas, where he was assigned to the construction project of the Dallas Fort Worth airport.
Over his 26 year career, Cuny worked in crises in more than fifty countries, including Biafra, Guatemala, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Iraq, Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, and Chechnya.
In 1970, when the Bhola Cyclone struck East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), Cuny was hired by the British NGO Oxfam to serve as an advisor in East Pakistan. He later described this assignment as 'life-changing' because it was there that he was first 'immersed' in the international disaster relief system. Since Intertect, his consulting company, was wholly dependent on outside contracts, these entities often included the same people upon whom his livelihood depended. Oxfam called upon him again after the earthquake near Managua, Nicaragua, in 1972. Oxfam asked him to plan a camp for the earthquake survivors; he used shelter units by forming a cluster around common spaces. Oxfam requested Cuny's assistance again with reconstruction after the Guatemala earthquake in 1976. Oxfam and its partner NGO, World Neighbors, asked Cuny to conceptualize a strategy for housing reconstruction. He responded with an approach called "Programa Kuchuba'l". Instead of rushing in construction materials from outside the region, he used local materials.
During the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia, Cuny conducted assessments of famine victims who had fled to Sudan from areas of Ethiopia that were affected by protracted drought, war and famine. They settled in camps around Showak and in the UN Food and Agriculture Organization camps in eastern Sudan. During this period, Cuny arranged to provide food to those who voluntarily repatriated in spite of opposition from the US government and UN representatives. In 1986, Cuny led an interagency assessment in Ethiopia that included the review of backup supplies and food availability. However, he extended the assessment to examine dependency problems. As the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse, in 1992, Cuny and Intertect provided assessment and planning in Mongolia, and in areas of Georgia, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Dagestan and Chechnya.
Cuny began developing guidelines for camp management for refugees in 1970. He created his report on the Nicaragua camp plan in 1973. In 1979, Cuny was contracted to advise on the Kampuchean refugee camp in Thailand. Cuny's Assessment Manual for Refugee Emergencies informed USAID OFDA's set of guidelines; it is still in use as the Field Operations Guide. In 1991, the US military was called to provide humanitarian assistance but identified a problem of meeting the Kurds' needs in the mountains. Cuny was brought in to advise the US State Department and the military. Cuny proposed setting up safe zones in Northern Iraq and convincing the Kurds to return. The concept required establishing a humanitarian vanguard in Zakho, Iraq, still occupied by the Iraqi Army, and a series of demarches to the Iraqi military to withdraw. The operation was credited with saving thousands of lives.
Ambassador Marc Grossman, Deputy Chief of Mission in the US Embassy in Turkey at the time, recounted his involvement with what was known as Operation Provide Comfort: