[1][2] Originally a project of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), IRIN News operated under the UN until 1 January 2015.

IRIN was launched in 1995 after the Great Lakes refugee crisis resulting from the 1994 Rwandan genocide the existing information management systems set up by the humanitarian aid community.

[17] A 2018 survey of their readers found that they are composed of: Not-for-profit and NGO (35.9%), Academia (8.6%), United Nations (8.5%), Government (8.1%), Media (7.6%), Business (5.4%), Donor (1.2%), Other (24.7%).

When The New Humanitarian was established as IRIN in 1995, it used fax and email to distribute weekly roundups on the Great Lakes region from its headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya.

[1] Key supporters have included the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Canton of Geneva, and the international aid agencies of Australia, Belgium, Canada, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland.