Govt eyes new refugee camp

UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, has pledged its support of Malawi’s move to resettle more than 50 000 refugees and asylum-seekers.

The migrants are currently living at the overcrowded Dzaleka Refugee Camp, formerly a prison ring-fenced for notorious dissidents, in Dowa District.

Last week, government announced it had secured a new site in Chitipa District at the northern tip of the country to reduce overcrowding at Dzaleka.

The camp was originally designed to accommodate 12000 people, but the number has more than quadrupled.

Valentin Tapsoba, UNHCR regional director for southern Africa, pledged support for the move after meeting President Lazarus Chakwera in Lilongwe.

According to a statement released after the meeting, Tapsoba said the UN refugees agency welcomes the Government of Malawi’s commitment to improving living conditions and overall well-being of refugees living in the country by upgrading refugee settlements.

The meeting comes as security agencies in Malawi have ramped up a clampdown on refugees and asylum-seekers doing business in Malawi, forcibly relocating them to Dzaleka.

Malawi set up the refugee camp in 1994 to accommodate, but now it is hosting more than 50 000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia and Ethiopia.

Kenyi Emanuel Lukajo, the associate external relations and reporting officer for the UNHCR in Malawi, says the government has relocated about 8 000 refugees, who have been living outside the camp.

He said the operation launched last month has strained the already scarce resources at the camp.

“Life is very difficult,” said Lokajo. “There isn’t enough water, not enough shelter, even the children who are pulled out of school in the city are not able to enrol in schools because there are not enough slots.”

He added: “Everything is not there, so we don’t have the money to provide for an additional number of people that have been relocated.”

Malawi started forcibly relocating refugees, who were illegally living across rural and urban areas of the country after the expiration of the April 15 deadline the government set for voluntary relocation.

UNHCR says that to date, approximately 1 900 individuals have returned to the congested camp amid financial challenges the agency is facing in taking care of the refugees.

The UN refugee agency says that by 1 June, it has only received 15 percent of the required $27.2 million to adequately support refugees and asylum-seekers in Malawi this year.

However, the Malawi Government says it has acquired land for a new resettlement site for the refugees in Chitipa to solve overcrowding problems facing the refugees there.

Minister of Homeland Security Ken Zikhale Ng’oma told journalists last week that the new settlement will also help keep away potential criminals who enter Malawi under the pretext of being refugees and asylum keepers.

“Which is why we want to change the system now. We will close Dzaleka anytime,” he said. “And we will open up a new site in Chitipa where we want to make sure that anybody who enters Malawi should be examined before entering Malawi just as Americans do.”

According to Ng’oma, when the new camp is opened, “no asylum seeker will get in and say ‘I will apply inside’ no”.

“It is done at the gate, so we want to borrow the American system,” he explained.

UNHCR says it stands ready to provide the necessary support toward the new site.

The talk of the new refugee camp comes a decade after similar UNHCR-backed attempts to establish a camp at Katiri in the neighbouring Karonga District was met with fierce resistance from local citizens and traditional leaders.

“If the government says they have found a new site, UNHCR has no objection to that as long as UNHCR is involved in the process and then we assess the site to ensure that the site has got enough water, is not prone to flooding and the site is not very close to the border,” said Lokajo.

He pledged that UNHCR will not hesitate to support the process “if all the conditions are met”.

Government authorities in Malawi have promised to involve UNHCR in assessing the proposed site and securing resources for the new settlement to take shape.