Mark Yarnell is senior advocate and UN liaison for Refugees International where his work focuses primarily on forced displacement in sub-Saharan Africa. He has co-authored a report on promoting refugee participation in the upcoming Global Refugee Forum (June 2019).
Since joining RI in 2011, he has led field assessments to Somalia, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic, and has conducted research in Burkina Faso, Niger, Myanmar, and Greece.
Mark has testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health Policy, and the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. He been a guest on multiple broadcast shows including on NPR, PBS, BBC, CNN International, Al Jazeera, and CBC. Prior to joining RI, Mark was a Stimson Center congressional fellow based in the office of U.S. Senator Richard Lugar. He has worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a field officer with Merlin, a medical relief organization, and as a food security consultant for Oxfam. Additionally, he was a program associate at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and a senior program associate at the Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office. Mark earned a Master of Science in Foreign Service degree from Georgetown University and was a teaching assistant to former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. He grew up in Ottawa, Canada.