In 1983, Caritas Internationalis took over the seat held by CRS, and the International Save the Children Alliance joined in 1992.
Andrew Morley, the World Vision International President and Chief Executive Officer is the current Chair of the SCHR.
An important role of the SCHR is to introduce the field experience of its members into humanitarian decision making process of the United Nations, particularly through the UN's Inter-agency Standing Committee (IASC) which is made up of the heads of the principle UN agencies involved in humanitarian assistance.
In addition to drawing up the Red Cross and NGO Code of Conduct for Disaster Response, the SCHR, together with the US based NGO consortium, InterAction, set up the Sphere Project in 1997 to develop minimum standards for humanitarian assistance in four major sectors, water and sanitation, food, shelter, and health, as well as framing a humanitarian charter for disaster response.
In order to improve accountability, the members agreed to process for reviewing each other on important issues related to humanitarian response.