At Dzaleka Refugee Camp, hunger is now driving crime.
With donor funding collapsing, the Malawi Government says the current financing model for refugee camps may no longer be sustainable and is considering integrating some refugees into communities by granting citizenship to some long-staying residents.
Minister of Homeland Security Peter Mukhito disclosed this in an interview on Friday on the back of warnings from the World Food Programme (WFP) that it could suspend food assistance after next month without new funding.
Cuts in food rations for about 64 000 refugees, combined with the arrival of up to 300 new people every month, have pushed desperation to breaking point.
Police say crime in the area has risen by 70 percent this year, with thefts doubling and mob violence emerging inside the camp.
WFP is the sole agency providing food assistance at Dzaleka. Its head of programme Aachal Chand said funding will only last until the end of August. “After August, if we do not receive any funding, we will have to completely stop all the assistance we are providing. That would mean refugees will no longer have access to cash to buy food,” Chand said.
WFP needs US$12 million (around K21 billion) to restore full rations through to January 2027.
At present it is only providing US$12 (K21 000) per person per month—60 percent of the full US$20 (K35 000) ration.
For refugees, that gap is life or death. Costasia Niyibigira, 55, fled Rwanda in 2014 and has lived at Dzaleka since. She cannot walk after a bullet lodged in her thigh during the genocide in her native country over 30 years ago. She cares for two children and two grandchildren.
“Food is my biggest challenge, on top of my medical issues. I am a person with a disability and I cannot walk. I do not have any source of income apart from the food assistance provided by WFP. If they stop providing food to us, I will be sent to the grave. I will die,” she said.
Edambingoyi Marie Jeane, 56, from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), looks after eight children. She has diabetes.
“If WFP stops providing food, we will die. I take medication on an empty stomach. I cannot recover. If you push me, I will fall down,” she said.
Malawi established Dzaleka in 1994 to host people fleeing genocide and war in the Great Lakes region. It was built for between 10 000 and 12 000 people.
Today it holds about 64 000 refugees and asylum seekers from DRC, Burundi, Rwanda, Somalia and Ethiopia. Congolese account for about 43 000 of this population.
New arrivals have not stopped. Malawi’s Department of Refugee Services says up to 300 people are registered each month—up from fewer than 200 a few years ago.
Malawi’s encampment policy, enforced in March 2023, requires all refugees to live at Dzaleka.
They are not legally permitted to work outside or run businesses beyond the camp. That leaves 18 000 households almost entirely dependent on aid.
From crackdown to citizenship
The irony is stark. Just three years ago, in March 2023, the Malawi Government under the Lazarus Chakwera administration launched a major ‘back to camp’ operation, ordering all refugees and asylum seekers living in towns and cities to relocate to Dzaleka.
Backed by the police and military, the exercise was framed as a security and sovereignty measure.
The message then was clear: refugees must be contained, counted and kept apart from Malawian communities. Encampment became policy again, with strict restrictions on movement, work and business outside the camp.
Now, with donor funding evaporating and the cost of maintaining Dzaleka ballooning, government is weighing the opposite approach.
Minister Mukhito’s admission that integration and citizenship are being considered marks a dramatic reversal.
The same State that forced thousands back behind the camp fence in 2023 is now conceding that keeping 64 000 people idle in an overcrowded settlement is fiscally and socially unsustainable.
What was presented as a long-term solution in 2023 has, in just three years, become the very problem government says it must undo.
That policy reversal is being forced by a funding collapse that is already biting inside the camp.
The funding collapse is global. United Nations High Commission for Refugees’ (UNHCR) budget for Malawi has fallen by about 90 percent, from US$8 million (around K14 billion) last year to US$1 million (about K1.75 billion) this year, following United States government aid cuts.
Organisations that protected refugee rights have closed. Inua Advocacy, based at Dzaleka, has suspended operations.
“We are no longer able to maintain a lawyer on our team. We have also had to stop responding to many emergency needs while refugees await durable solutions,” said executive director Innocent Magambi, himself a former refugee.
With less food, less protection and no livelihoods, crime has spiked.
Dowa Police spokesperson Alice Sitima confirmed 34 cases were reported between January and July 2026, compared to 20 in the same period in 2025—a 70 percent increase.
Theft alone is up by more than 200 percent, according to Sitima. One of the refugee leaders Nduwimana Nasoro said the situation is worse inside.
Nasoro said one refugee was killed by a mob last month after being caught stealing.
“As I speak to you, someone has been hacked after being caught stealing in a field. All this is happening because people are trying to survive,” he said. Muliebilinge Jerome from DRC, who lives in a tent with four children, said: “My children have often been caught stealing because we have nothing to eat. The situation is dire.”
The problem is spilling into host communities. Traditional Authority Msakambewa said his subjects are complaining of crops being stolen.
“Most of the offenders are children, whom I believe are only doing it in search of food,” he said.
Malawi’s refugee programme has been funded almost entirely by donors for 30 years. That model is now collapsing—and there is little Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world failing to finance its own social programmes, can do to fill the funding gap.
Thus, the refugee system has no domestic buffer.
Department of Refugee Services principal administrative officer Vincent Chaduka said the funding crisis is placing “additional pressure on government resources”.
To decongest Dzaleka, government and UNHCR have identified Kayilikizi in Chitipa as a site for a new camp.
An assessment puts the cost at US$89 (over K155 billion) million for compensation and construction.
“The funding will help compensate people currently living on the proposed site. We are working with various stakeholders to establish the new camp,” Chaduka said.
Mukhito said security inside Dzaleka has been intensified, but admitted the donor-funded model could not continue.
“We are also looking at the possibility of integrating refugees into our communities by granting citizenship to those who have been in the country for many years,” Mukhito said.
Refugee rights groups argue integration, not a new camp, is the sustainable answer.
With encampment, refugees cannot farm or trade, so every new arrival increases the aid bill.
For now, the immediate threat is August. If WFP funding does not come, 64 000 people could lose the cash they use to buy maize, beans and cooking oil.
Jeane summed it up: “The condition of the place where we are living already looks like a grave and if they stop giving us food, certainly we will die.”
