Refugees need urgent food aid

Malawi is seeking donations to feed more than 50 000 refugees facing shortages at the country’s only refugee camp.

Government officials said the camp’s food stock is expected to be depleted by December.

The appeal comes after the World Food Programme last month cut by half the food rations for the refugees because of funding problems.

The refugees at the Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Dowa said the food shortage has become worse largely because of the ongoing forcible relocation of refugees, who are staying outside of the camp.

“We are so many in the camp because of these people from outside the camp—the people who were in towns,” said Burundian refugee Niyibigira Goreth, a community leader at the Dzaleka refugee camp. “So, now, all of them are here relying on food ration. Yeah, it’s a big problem that we have here.”

Forced relocations

The government started relocating refugees and asylum seekers in June in adherence with its encampment policy that restricts the refugees to living and operating within camp premises.

Malawian officials said more than 2 000 of the targeted 8 000 refugees have been relocated to the camp.

Last month, the WFP cut food rations for the refugees by one-half because of funding problems.

It appealed for $6.3 million to meet the food needs for the refugees up to June of next year.

However, Minister of Homeland Security Ken Zikhale Ng’oma told journalists in Lilongwe that the action has put the government in an awkward situation.

“Now it is like a bottleneck to the government,” he said. “The [food] ration or capacity that we have will end in December. So, we need to try means and modalities that help us so that we lobby the donors to support us, so that we are able to feed our people.”

Home to thousands

Dzaleka was formerly a notorious prison for founding president Hastings Kamuzu Banda’s perceived political dissidents.

It was transformed into a refugee camp following the fall of the dictator in 1994, a year after Malawians voted democracy in a national referendum.

Dzaleka is home to more than 50 000 refugees, mainly from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Somalia.

However, the food shortage at the refugee camp is forcing some of the relocated refugees to return to areas outside the camp.

Mulanje Bale lawmaker Victor Musowa told the Parliament of Malawi recently that many relocated refugees have returned to his area.

“All Burundians in my community are back and majority of them are Seventh Day Adventists,” said Musowa. “I am happy to declare that I go to church with them and they are contributing to the church, so we should look at another way of solving this.”

‘It will be inhumane’

Blantyre City South legislator  Sameer Suleman said it would be proper if Malawi allowed those refugees who have long stayed outside the camp to remain in place wherever they are.

“For so long, we have accommodated them, and their kids don’t know other homes but Malawi,” said Suleman. “I think it will be inhumane to remove these refugees. Let’s consider incorporating them into the society, we have already done that. That’s my view.”

However, the Ministry of Homeland Security issued a statement giving the refugees who have left the camp and returned outside the camp seven days to relocate to the camp or risk having their refugee status revoked.