Government to use force to relocate refugees
Ministry of Homeland Security says will use force to relocate refugees to Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Dowa, District after the grace period for voluntary relocation expired on April 14 2023.
In an interview, the ministry’s spokesperson Patrick Botha yesterday said only 368 out of the earmarked 8 000 refugees and asylum seekers have returned to the camp.
He said: “The agencies concerned, which include the National Registration Bureau, Police and the Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services have already been oriented on the standard operating procedures.
“I may not give the specific date when the operation will be carried out to avoid jeopardising the process.”
However, Botha said the operation will give an opportunity to authorities to capture the actual number of refugees who have settled outside the camp.
Centre for Democracy and Economic Development Initiatives executive director Sylvester Namiwa has on a number of occasions pleaded with the ministry to postpone the plan, arguing that lacked merit as there are some contentious issues to be resolved.
He said while the government was acting within the realm of the laws and regulations governing refugees and asylum seekers, it ought to approach the matter with sobriety and ensure that measures it employs do not backfire.
Namiwa said population is one of the issues that needs attention because Dzaleka was designed to host 10 000 refugees, but is hosting over 50 000.
But during an engagement with International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Lilongwe last month, Homeland Security Minister Ken Zikhale Ng’oma decried the increasing number of economic migrants masquerading as refugees who are mostly not documented.
“Our major concern is the influx of foreigners masquerading as refugees and monopolising such small businesses as tomato and vegetable sales thereby choking small to medium enterprises among the locals that the government is actually trying to promote.
“These people infiltrate both rural and urban locations, often without permits. Undocumented immigrants pose a threat to national security,” he said.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in a recent statement argued that relocating several thousand refugees back to the camp will have dire consequences on the provision of critical basic services such as health and education, as well as protection activities.
“The relocation means that children will have to leave their schools and for breadwinners [it means they have] to abandon their employment or small businesses and return to a camp where they will be dependent on humanitarian assistance,” it reads.
Further, the agency argues that it is battling underfunding such that, by March 28 2023, it had only received six percent of the required $27.2 million (about K28 billion) to adequately support refugees and asylum-seekers in Malawi this year.
But according to Botha, government and its partners such as the Malawi Red Cross Society, were already addressing the congestion challenge by providing tents to Dzaleka Camp for additional accommodation.
Residence of refugees outside Dzaleka Camp has been declared illegal through a High Court ruling, which overturned previous more liberal decisions made by the government committee established under the Refugees Act.
