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The 60,000 people in Malawi’s Dzaleka camp are the frontline casualties of the World Food Programme’s (WFP) funding crisis. At the beginning of September, they received approximately $8 per person to last them the entire month – a cash payment that barely covers a week’s needs.
Around $28 is actually needed to provide each refugee with a food basket that meets the daily minimum of 2,100 calories. For example, the price of maize, a key staple, has doubled. Yet WFP has rarely met that calorie target, with cash payments fluctuating month to month as the agency struggles with a long-standing cash crunch.
WFP recently offered refugees an alternative: It would target the most vulnerable – people with disabilities, orphans, and older refugees – but would cut everyone else. In a camp meeting also involving the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, and the Malawian authorities, that option was firmly rejected by community leaders.
Their argument was that vulnerability in Dzaleka could not be reduced to a few categories. There are teenage mothers, widows, single mothers, unemployed young people, and households in which one person’s small income supports many others.
Community and zone leaders from all the communities – Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and countries in the Horn of Africa – spoke in one voice: prioritising only certain groups would be unfair as everyone is struggling.
“There are a lot of people who are vulnerable besides the ones they suggested,” said one refugee, who asked not to be named. “All these groups depend entirely on these rations. If they cut them, they will be left out and very vulnerable.”
Deciding who is “vulnerable enough” would also create divisions inside the camp, which is located 45 kilometres from the capital, Lilongwe. “It is better to give everyone the little that WFP has,” the refugee added. For a refugee population already living with so little, even a small payment can make a difference.
“Remember we exist”, refugees in Malawi say as aid is slashed
Drastic cuts to the budget of the UN’s refugee agency mean an uncertain future for 56,000 refugees.
What to do with $8
This month, the Dzaleka community must budget extremely frugally over how they will use their $8. Some will buy basic necessities. Others will try and repay debts accumulated over the months of ration cuts.
This is how life works for many in our three-decade old camp. A food payment does not necessarily remain food. It becomes soap, school materials, cooking supplies, clothes, credit repayments. Sometimes it becomes a way to help another family member who has received nothing.
That is why uncertainty surrounding WFP assistance is so frightening. The September distribution has brought relief, but we know that relief can also be temporary. WFP has repeatedly warned that funding constraints could affect future assistance. People are therefore eating today while wondering whether they will eat next month.
The food crisis is only part of the problem. For young people, perhaps the deeper crisis is the disappearance of opportunity. Many have spent years in Dzaleka studying and developing skills, hoping that education will eventually lead to employment or a pathway out of the camp. But opportunities remain limited.
Budget cuts have indefinitely paused the Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot (EMPP), a Canadian immigration initiative – co-supported by organisations like the World University Service of Canada – that connects skilled refugees with economic immigration pathways.
For some refugees, programmes such as the EMPP represented something different from humanitarian assistance -- the possibility of building an alternative future through work.
When such opportunities disappear, the message young people receive is difficult to ignore. Working hard, acquiring skills, and becoming self-reliant may in the end account for very little.
Then came another source of uncertainty. In late August, reports circulated that a new refugee settlement was being constructed at Kailizi in the far northern district of Chitipa. The possibility of being transferred from Dzaleka immediately raised questions. Who will go? When will they go? Will families be moved together? What will happen to the houses and businesses people have built in Dzaleka?
Several sources in the camp said they understood that new arrivals would be the first to go to Kailizi, and could be the first refugees considered for relocation abroad. But beyond that, there is little certainty.
The reason for building a new settlement is understandable. Dzaleka is severely overcrowded. A camp designed for approximately 10,000 people is home to triple that number. Kailizi, on the other hand, covers 445 hectares of land – more than twice the size of Dzaleka.
But for refugees, a new settlement is not simply a new location on a map. It means starting again. Families have spent decades building their lives here. Their children were born here. Their businesses are here. Their neighbours are here. Moving them without clear information could create another layer of uncertainty for people who have already lived with uncertainty for most of their lives.
Hope on the horizon
There is finally, however, one potential bright spot. The government recently indicated it may review its Refugee Act and its strict encampment policy that denies refugees the right to work outside Dzaleka. Civil society advocates of a new proposed bill want it to provide opportunities for refugee integration, as well as the possibility of acquiring citizenship for those who meet the necessary legal requirements.
That will mark a dramatic reversal from 2023, when the government clamped down on refugees working and owning businesses in Lilongwe, with a surge of arrests and forced returns to Dzaleka.
At the time, UNHCR noted that Dzaleka already faced inadequate health services, and water, shelter, and sanitation facilities for the existing population.
“Relocating self-sufficient and productive refugees and asylum-seekers to Dzaleka will only exacerbate these problems as their prospects of rebuilding their lives will dwindle,” it warned. “The relocation will also negatively affect refugee children enrolled in schools across the country should they have to join overcrowded classes in the camp.”
What is currently happening in Dzaleka is bigger than a reduction in food assistance. It is the slow disappearance of the systems that refugees have depended on to make our existence bearable.
As a refugee, I can say many of us are excited about the proposed amendment to the Refugee Act. With WFP and UNHCR struggling to support us, abandoning encampment will allow capable refugees to become self-sufficient.
We have contributed to Malawi's economy for decades. We pay taxes, we create jobs, and we employ many in the host community. If the amended act allows us to work and operate freely across the country, it will be a dream come true for many of us, and it will ease the pressure on already strained resources.
Without the new bill, life will just get so much harder.
What is currently happening in Dzaleka is bigger than a reduction in food assistance. It is the slow disappearance of the systems that refugees have depended on to make our existence bearable.
The feeling is that the safety net underneath Dzaleka is disappearing. We are facing WFP’s ration cuts, UNHCR’s reduced presence due to its own funding crisis, unemployment, and rising petty crime. Each development might appear manageable on its own, but together this is a cascade of anxiety-inducing change.
For refugees, this is not an abstract problem. It is the mother wondering how she will feed her children, the young man looking for work and finding none, or the widow wondering whether she will qualify for the next food distribution.
Edited by Obi Anyadike.
