33 Facts About Fred Cuny

Frederick C Cuny was an American humanitarian whose work spanned disaster relief and recovery from war and civil conflict.

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.

Fred Cuny obtained a pilot license while still in high school.

Fred Cuny later attended the University of Houston where he studied urban planning and received a bachelor's degree in political science in 1967.

In 1970, when the Bhola Cyclone struck East Pakistan, Fred Cuny was hired by the British NGO Oxfam to serve as an advisor in East Pakistan.

Fred Cuny later described this assignment as 'life-changing' because it was there that he was first 'immersed' in the international disaster relief system.

Oxfam and its partner NGO, World Neighbors, asked Fred Cuny to conceptualize a strategy for housing reconstruction.

In 1986, Fred Cuny led an interagency assessment in Ethiopia that included the review of backup supplies and food availability.

Fred Cuny began developing guidelines for camp management for refugees in 1970.

Fred Cuny created his report on the Nicaragua camp plan in 1973.

In 1979, Fred Cuny was contracted to advise on the Kampuchean refugee camp in Thailand.

Fred Cuny was brought in to advise the US State Department and the military.

Fred Cuny proposed setting up safe zones in Northern Iraq and convincing the Kurds to return.

Once we had established that safe zone in the north, just as Fred Cuny had predicted, 500,000 people went home.

Fred Cuny developed a set of recommendations for keeping a safe distance from Somalia's political hot spots and especially to avoid operating within the capital, Mogadishu.

Fred Cuny devised an approach centered on the El Salvador government purchasing unused land and building housing.

USAID OFDA subsequently requested Fred Cuny's help again after the 1988 Armenian earthquake.

Fred Cuny insisted that a higher priority for the plastic sheeting USAID had brought was to provide temporary shelter for people to be used instead for stabling animals.

In Kuwait, in anticipation of the end of the Gulf War, Fred Cuny was a member of an USAID OFDA team based in Kuwait that planned to go into Iraq at the war's conclusion.

Fred Cuny brought in a team to resolve a disruption of natural gas into Sarajevo.

Fred Cuny co-founded the University of Wisconsin Disaster Management Center.

In 1994, Morton Abramowitz, the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Fred Cuny created the International Crisis Group.

Fred Cuny later established Intertect, an international assistance company, in 1987.

In late 1994, during the armed conflict in Chechnya, George Soros's Open Society Institute asked Fred Cuny to help with an assistance assessment plan in Chechnya.

Fred Cuny believed he could work with the Russian military and with Chechen rebels to evacuate the population.

Fred Cuny returned to the United States in March 1995 and went public with a denouncement of Russia's brutal campaign.

High-level US government supporters of Fred Cuny arranged for him to testify to officials in Washington.

Fred Cuny returned to his base of operations in Ingushetia, and on March 31,1995, he traveled to Chechnya in a Russian ambulance with two Russian doctors and an interpreter.

Fred Cuny's driver was released and returned to Ingushetia with a message from Cuny saying that he was "okay" and expected to be released soon.

The couple divorced after two years, with Fred Cuny gaining custody of his son, Craig.

Fred Cuny moved to Dallas with his son and never remarried.

Fred Cuny was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1995 but disappeared before he could officially receive his award.

Author William Shawcross wrote Deliver us From Evil: peacekeepers, warlords and the world of endless conflict, published in 2000, in which he dedicated a prologue to Fred Cuny titled "The World's Texan".