Steady stream of asylum seekers from Great Lakes

Malawi is still experiencing a constant stream of people seeking refuge from the strife-torn Great Lakes region, Disaster Relief and Preparedness Commissioner Lucius Chikuni told IRIN. However, he said the country was well prepared for the steady stream of people seeking asylum in Malawi. "Between 1994 and 1997 we had 5,000 refugees, and it has just been a steady increase over the years - and the main reason for that is the fact that the strife in the Great lakes region has not subsided," Chikuni said. He explained that there were two groups of people seeking refuge in Malawi. "Firstly, we have the [officially registered] refugees - right now there are 4,000 of them. And then there are 6,000 asylum seekers who have not yet been granted refugee status - they are going through the determination process, and that involves interviewing each individual separately to establish whether indeed that person is running away [with a] founded fear of persecution," he said. "There's still a lot of fighting there in the DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo]. Then, of course, we are also looking at the countries like Burundi - there may be peace, but today or tomorrow, something erupts again. So it's basically ... that people still feel insecure," Chikuni said. Malawi itself has just come out of a food security crisis which saw millions of its citizens dependent on international food aid to survive. The country staged a remarkable recovery this year, thanks largely to good rains during the planting season, and government and aid agency interventions in the form of inputs provision. But the influx of refugees and asylum seekers has "not been a problem at all", Chikuni said. "The refugees are taken care of [by the] international community through UNHCR [UN High Commissioner for Refugees], so the presence of refugees in a country does not affect the economy of a country at all - so the impact is not felt internally by the rest of the community in Malawi," he noted. The only negative was that "the environment tends to suffer, as they have to cut down trees for firewood and other uses. But what we have done with UNHCR is introduce afforestation programmes around the camp". Chikuni said about "100 to 200 [asylum seekers] come in every month" from the Great Lakes region.