The Humanitarian and Resilience Investing (HRI) Initiative was launched in 2019 to catalyse flows of private capital into financially sustainable opportunities that benefit communities in humanitarian and fragile contexts. HRI is defined as capital invested in ways that measurably benefit communities and strengthen economies in humanitarian and fragile contexts while creating a financial return. An HRI opportunity is a private or public driven effort that benefits the recovery and resilience of local communities that are at heightened risk or have suffered from conflict, natural disasters and forced displacement and are, or have the ambition to become, commercially viable.

In exploring effective approaches to building resilience in situations of fragility and conflict, actors from different sectors must contribute a range of capital flows, skills, networks and knowledge to HRI opportunities. There are five development stages HRI opportunities go through on their pathway to scale and unlock new sources of finance.