Charu is the Founder and Director of All Survivors Project. She has been Associate Fellow in the Asia Program at Chatham House since 2004 where she covers political and human rights developments in South and South East Asia. She was Policy and Advocacy Director and previously Asia Program Manager at Child Soldiers International, formerly the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. Charu worked as the South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch until 2009 and documented violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in Nepal and Sri Lanka. Before joining Chatham House, she was an international journalist based in India, Sri Lanka and London writing for among others, Far Eastern Economic Review, the BBC-South Asia Regional Unit, India Today and The Times of India. Charu has briefed UN member states on the human rights and political situation in Myanmar (Burma), Sri Lanka, Nepal, and India at the Human Rights Council in Geneva; the UN Security Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict in New York; and the European Parliament in Brussels. She has conducted in-depth research on sexual violence in Sri Lanka and provided expert evidence to the UK Upper Tribunal Country Guidance case on Sri Lanka in 2013. Charu received a Bachelor of Arts in History from Hindu College, University of Delhi and an MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Charu has been an active partner of LISD since 2017, co-chairing its program on Sexual- and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV), and joined its Advisory Council in April 2023.