2026 CHS Alliance Board elections candidates

Lubna Alkanawati

Nominating Organisation: Danish Refugee Council

What motivates you to join the Alliance’s Board?

I am motivated by the conviction that humanitarian action must be locally led and gender-transformative. My experience as a survivor and an Executive Director at Women Now for Development has shown me that accountability often fails at the intersection of conflict and gender. I want to bring a Syrian feminist perspective to the Board to help the Alliance deepen its impact in fragile contexts. I am driven to ensure the CHS is accessible to grassroots actors and that the voices of those directly affected by crises are central to the Alliance’s strategic decisions, fostering a more equitable global humanitarian system.

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Peter Kidi Utong

Nominating Organisation: Finn Church Aid

What motivates you to join the Alliance’s Board?
Beyond writing, I have been deeply engaged in community-level advocacy. I speak on behalf of those who are silenced by fear of deportation or intimidation. I have seen women and children pushed into despair, suicide, and dangerous journeys back across borders due to flawed aid policies. These are not abstract statistics for me they are my daily reality. I bring to the CHS Alliance Board lived experience, creativity, and a strong commitment to accountability. I know what it means when humanitarian standards are not applied, when communities are excluded from decision-making, and when aid policies ignore the human cost. I want to contribute this perspective so that humanitarian systems are shaped not only by policy-makers, but also by the voices of those they affect.

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Ugochi Cynthia Abazie Abang

Position: Global Programme Manager
Organisation: LM International

What motivates you to join the Alliance’s Board?

I am motivated to join the CHS Alliance Board because I want to contribute to strengthening accountability and quality in humanitarian response from both a global and practitioner perspective. As a human rights lawyer with extensive field experience, I bring a rights-based and principled approach to humanitarian action, grounded in a strong commitment to safeguarding, including PSEAH, and accountability to affected populations. My professional journey, shaped by working across diverse humanitarian contexts and by my Nigerian background, drives my commitment to advancing localisation and ensuring that actors from crisis-affected settings are meaningfully represented in global decision-making spaces. I believe deeply in elevating perspectives that are often underrepresented and in bridging the gap between policy and practice. Working from Sweden also gives me a Nordic perspective that values transparency, quality assurance, and robust accountability mechanisms. Through my engagement in networks such as SNHA, I regularly contribute to dialogues with Nordic actors and donors, advocating for stronger recognition of the CHS and supporting systemwide discussions on CHS passporting. Joining the Board would be an opportunity for me to help the Alliance deepen its impact by translating standards into practice, strengthening partnerships with local actors, and fostering a culture of continuous learning and accountability across the sector. With my combined legal background, field-level experience, and policy engagement, I aim to contribute constructively to the Alliance’s mission and to the continued strengthening of humanitarian quality and accountability globally.

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Mansoor Ahmed

Position: Executive Director
Organisation: Fast Rural Development Program

What motivates you to join the Alliance’s Board

Mansoor has more than 25 years of experience in the humanitarian sector and more importantly from the most complex humanitarian contexts, which include Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iraq, South Sudan and Pakistan. Over the years, Mansoor has observed persistent challenges and systemic disparities in the understanding of the humanitarian ecosystem, along with unequal access to resources within the framework of the localization agenda. He has been part of humanitarian policy discussions in the global north and personally experienced challenges of the global south. The experience gained and challenges, that humanitarian organizations (local and international) face in emergencies, should reflect in the CHS Alliance which is promoting accountable and quality humanitarian actions. I think, Mansoor being in the Board of the CHS Alliance will be an opportunity to bring the voices of all to the forum.

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Lina Alhaj

Position: Global Accountability and Participation Advisor
Organisation: War Child

What motivates you to join the Alliance’s Board?

My field experience has taught me one thing clearly: the gap between what the Core Humanitarian Standard commits to and what communities actually experience is not simply a technical issue. It is also a question of proximity, of how closely standards, systems, and decisions remain connected to the realities of the people they are meant to serve. I want to join the CHS Alliance Board because I can bring that field-rooted perspective to its strategic work. I have seen what it looks like when a feedback mechanism exists on paper but is not trusted by the community. I understand what meaningful PSEAH integration requires when reporting pathways must be safe, accessible, and survivor-centred in practice. I have also seen the limits of localisation when national partners are expected to implement compliance requirements they have had little role in shaping. My experience in Palestine, including work in West Bank and Gaza, and other highly constrained environments, has shown me both the importance of the Standard and the challenge of making it meaningful in reality. I would value the opportunity to contribute to the Board by helping strengthen the practical application of CHS, support stronger integration of safe reporting and accountability mechanisms, and promote approaches that are more accessible and relevant for local and national partners. I believe the Alliance benefits from voices that remain closely connected to field realities and to the lived experience of the communities humanitarian action is meant to serve.

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Eak Raj Chhatkuli

Position: Executive Director
Organisation: Nepal FOCUS

What motivates you to join the Alliance’s Board?

With over three decades of leadership in community development and humanitarian action, I am keen to join the CHS Alliance Board to represent the voice of local NGOs from the Global South. As ED of FOCUS Nepal and an active member of global networks like NEAR, APLL, pledge for change, and shift the power, I bring deep grassroots experience combined with international collaboration. I believe my expertise in accountability, localization, and equitable partnerships aligns strongly with CHS values, and I am motivated to contribute toward ensuring humanitarian assistance remains people-centered, ethical, and responsive to the needs of affected communities.

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Danny Harvey

Position: Director of Technical Assistance
Organisation: Concern Worldwide

What motivates you to join the Alliance’s Board?

Values of equity, fairness and respecting people have guided my work and directed my career choices and I believe they are embodied in the work and leadership of the Alliance in our sector. In particular, in my current role as Director of Technical Assistance at Concern Worldwide, my current work; to drive programme quality and learning delivering impact for people affected by crisis in fragile and conflict affected contexts, maps directly onto the CHS Alliance Mission to improve aid quality and accountability. I believe that my experience, with a strong focus on application of the commitments in practice, would add value to the Board and I would be excited to support an organisation where the values are quite literally embodied in the work that it does.

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Sandra Mounir Saleh

Position: Head of Operations, People and Culture
Organisation: Nusaned NGO

What motivates you to join the Alliance’s Board?

Having led CHS compliance certification at Nusaned, I have seen firsthand how transformative structured accountability can be for governance and organizational culture. I am motivated to contribute to the strategic direction of the Alliance, particularly in strengthening localization, supporting national NGOs, and integrating CHS commitments into practical operational systems. I bring a systems-oriented mindset, governance expertise, and a strong ethical compass. Serving on the Board would allow me to help shape standards that are both rigorous and realistically implementable across diverse humanitarian contexts.

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Carly Sheehan

Position: Accountability Advisor
Organisation: Oxfam

What motivates you to join the Alliance’s Board?

I am seeking a second term on the Board to continue in my role as Vice Chair, and to keep championing for collective approaches to improving accountability across members of all shapes and sizes. I am proud to have helped shepherd the Alliance’s new Strategy through its development and endorsement by the General Assembly, and the opportunity to continue playing a role on a Board that steers such a diverse movement is energizing. I look forward to contributing to shared momentum, fostering collaboration, and amplifying voices, especially those of local and national actors whose leadership is essential for accountability.

CHS Alliance Current Vice Chair of the Board 
Board attendance: 100%

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Janaina Tavares

Position: Global Head of People and Culture
Organisation: ActionAid International

What motivates you to join the Alliance’s Board?

I think of myself as a true world citizen. I was born in Brazil, have lived and worked in different parts of the world, and have spent over 20 years building People and Culture strategies across multiple countries and cultures. That journey has given me something I think is genuinely valuable for a Board like this, I can move fluidly between the Global South and the Global North, and I understand both worlds from the inside, not just from a distance. What motivates me is precisely that perspective. I know what it feels like when global standards are designed without the realities of Latin America or the broader Global South in mind. And I know what best-in-class people practices look like in some of the world’s most demanding environments. I want to bring both of those lenses to the CHS Alliance Board, to help shape a humanitarian system that is not only more accountable to the people it serves, but also more honest about the diversity of experience that needs to inform that accountability.

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