When capital meets emergency: humanitarian investment as a regime of governance

This article introduces the concept of humanitarian investment to analyse the transformation of humanitarian and crisis governance in the context of neoliberal globalisation and the growing involvement of private and hybrid actors. It argues that contemporary interventions are increasingly shaped by investment-oriented logics that reconfigure how aid is funded, organised, and evaluated across post-disaster and chronic vulnerability settings. Drawing on qualitative research combining interviews, participant observation, and document analysis, the article develops humanitarian investment as a regime-level concept structured around three interrelated dynamics: privatisation, individualisation, and financialisation. It shows how authority is progressively delegated to private and hybrid actors, how responsibility for recovery is transferred onto individuals and communities through resilience-oriented frameworks, and how financial instruments transform vulnerability into an object of valuation and risk management. Through empirical cases ranging from philanthropic foundations to insurance-based disaster governance and Global South donor infrastructures, the article demonstrates how these dynamics converge to reorganise crisis governance around performance, scalability, and expected return. The concept of humanitarian investment contributes to existing debates by connecting processes often analysed separately, including philanthro-capitalism and aid financialisation, and by showing how they jointly reshape authority, accountability, and the political economy of contemporary humanitarian action.