Core Relief Items explained: the case for repairable aid

When disaster strikes or people are forced to flee, humanitarian agencies respond with what are known as Core Relief Items, or CRIs - the standard bundle of essentials that helps a family survive the first days and weeks. Blankets, sleeping mats, jerry cans, kitchen sets, tarpaulins and solar lamps: developed and distributed at scale, most famously by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), CRIs are the backbone of emergency response worldwide.

They exist for good reason. Standardised items can be stockpiled, shipped and handed out quickly, to millions of people, in places where local supply chains have collapsed. In the chaotic aftermath of a crisis, that speed and predictability save lives.

This isn't a theoretical concern for the OPEN RELIEF partners. On the Greek island of Lesvos, LATRA has run a makerspace inside a refugee camp since 2016, working alongside displaced people who use CRIs every day - and who constantly improvise fixes and improvements. After the 2021 Petrinja earthquake in Croatia, partners studied how communities adapted relief items themselves. And in Ukraine, the rapid, resourceful reuse of aid under wartime conditions has shown just how much innovation already happens on the ground.

The case OPEN RELIEF makes is that repairability should be a design principle, not an afterthought. If relief items were open-source - their designs freely shared - and built to be fixed, upgraded and reproduced locally, aid would go further, generate less waste, and put more control in the hands of the people who depend on it.

That is the aim behind the project's eleven open-source solutions: preparedness and relief objects that communities and organisations can build, repair and adapt themselves, rather than replace. It doesn't mean abandoning the strengths of standardised aid - it means adding resilience and dignity to them. Aid that can be mended is aid that lasts longer, travels further, and treats the people receiving it as capable partners, not passive recipients.