Malawi gets $80M for 2nd refugee camp

LILONGWE, Malawi

Malawi received $80 million from the UN High Commissioner for the Refugees (UNHCR) toward the construction of a second refugee camp in the northern region, an official told Anadolu on Tuesday.

The southern African nation currently hosts 53,000 refugees and asylum seekers at its only refugee camp, Dzaleka, in the central region. Refugees from Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia have been at the camp since the early 1990s.

Homeland Security Minister Zikhale Ng’oma, told Anadolu that the donation would help construct a second camp that “would ease out congestion at Dzaleka which currently hosts more than what it requires.”

“As a nation, we are overwhelmed by an influx of refugees coming to Malawi on a daily basis seeking a place where they would find peace. But we are having challenges to accommodate all of them at one camp. This donation is therefore a response to our appeal to have another facility in the northern region of the country,” said Ng’oma.

“We would like to have a place where refugees and asylum seekers would stay and conduct their businesses without any challenges,” he added.

Malawi is implementing a joint voluntary refugee repatriation program with the UN refugee agency “to allow refugees and asylum seekers to return to their home countries willingly.”

The program has so far seen 200 refugees return to their countries.

George Phiri, a social commentator told Anadolu that there was a need for a “practical solution to minimize an influx of refugees coming to the country in order to address some social challenges which the country is experiencing due to the high numbers of refugees coming to the country.”

“We understand what is happening elsewhere across Africa, but let continental bodies like the African Union work out a practical solution that would see to it that people don’t run away from their home countries. As a nation, we are overwhelmed by the number of people we are hosting,” said Phiri.

There have been concerns about a recent proliferation of firearms among refugees at Dzaleka, a situation that security organs claim has fueled insecurity in some parts of the country.

In 2023, the Malawi government forcibly removed all refugees who were doing business in major towns and cities and relocated them to the camp, a move which was widely condemned by human rights bodies as "gross abuse of refugees' rights." The government has always defended the move claiming it was done "in the interest of national security."