UNHCR fits Malawi's refugees into one camp
UNHCR has had to house all the refugees in Malawi at a single camp following a government decision to close the country's second camp.
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Listen and Learn. Class sizes have grown sharply because of the closing of Luwena refugee camp and the consolidation of all Malawi's refugees and asylum seekers at Dzaleka camp. © UNHCR/J.Redden
DZALEKA REFUGEE CAMP, Malawi, November 8 (UNHCR) - The children filing into the classroom at Dzaleka Refugee Camp occupy all the seats, then overflow onto the floor at the feet of their teacher. Outside, three large tents shelter other classes as workers busily erect four more classrooms.
The school's population has abruptly risen this year from 1,200 to 1,700 students with the government's decision to close Malawi's other refugee camp. The last of 3,000 residents of Luwani, located in the south of the country, arrived in the centre of the country at Dzaleka at the end of October.
The unexpected consolidation into one camp near the capital, Lilongwe, forced UNHCR into a crash programme to increase the capacity of Dzaleka, which has swelled from about 5,000 refugees and asylum seekers to more than 8,000.
The camp clinic will benefit from the opening of a maternity wing, which was started well before the current needs increased. But the medical service, which treats Malawians as well as camp residents, has seen surging demands. While staff from Luwani - including the ambulance driver, with his vehicle - are to be transferred to Dzaleka, there is no place for them to live.
"The area is now congested with patients from morning to afternoon," said the head of the clinic.
The school has seen class sizes rise abruptly, with those in the lowest grades containing more than 100 children despite running two shifts a day. Classes for the higher grades often hold 70 or 80 children, although they have held down the size of the Grade Eight classes, the highest in the school, to about 45 students.
"The shortage of classrooms is the biggest problem. There are up to 120 in a class," said Headmaster Augustine Chipula, whose school is run by the Jesuit Refugee Services for UNHCR and has obtained the best graduation results in the district.
The number of students is likely to rise again when the new academic year starts in January because some 250 students who were enrolled in Luwani have not resumed classes in Dzaleka, possibly because they were initially busy helping build new homes.
Housing, of course, is the most urgent need. Those moving from Luwani, who arrived in convoys over the space of several months, were allocated individual plots with the foundations of a house.
Refugees and asylum seekers receive the material needed to complete their houses: grass and poles for the roof and moulds to shape sun-dried mud bricks for the walls. The clouds are thickening and those in the last convoy from Luwani have little time to complete their homes before the rainy season.
UNHCR provides finished houses to vulnerable individuals, but the work is not complete. While Ruth Mya, a 20-year-old single woman from Kenya, has been plastering the inside walls of the mud house she received, she is awaiting repairs to the hole in the plastic under the grass roof. She worries about the lack of a lock on the door and a window blocked only by a piece of cloth.
But the problems of accommodating those moving from Luwani are temporary. The longer-term implications are more serious. Hopes that at least some of those in remote Luwani could become self-sufficient through agriculture have been replaced by the limited prospects in Dzaleka.
The government of Malawi does not let refugees or asylum seekers take jobs in the country, leaving a small amount of tomato gardening at Dzaleka as their main legal source of income. But the new houses are rising amid the furrows of limited farmland that is no longer available.
UNHCR seeks to find a lasting solution for refugees by repatriation, local integration or resettlement to another country. Almost no refugees have chosen to go home from Malawi in recent years, the government rules out local integration and resettlement is available in relatively few cases. This raises the prospect that most refugees in Malawi will rely on UNHCR for a long time.
And with Dzaleka's population now building to the edges of the camp, there is the fear of what would happen if there is a fresh influx of refugees. Although the vast majority of arrivals in Malawi - Ethiopians and Somalis - quickly disappear toward South Africa, there is a steady trickle of asylum seekers who stay.
"We can't be complacent about the carrying capacity of this camp," said Henry Domzalski, UNHCR's representative in Malawi. "We must be clear about what the situation is so we don't suddenly discover it's full."
In the first half of this year, more than 300 new asylum seekers arrived from Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo - the same nationalities that already make up most of Malawi's refugee population. New arrivals previously were taken to Luwani on the grounds that Dzaleka was full, but since the closure order was issued in April new asylum seekers have been heading to the increasingly crowded facilities of Dzaleka.
By Jack Redden in Dzaleka Refugee Camp, Malawi
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2002 UNHCR Statistical Yearbook Country Data Sheet - Malawi
1 Sep 2004 ... ... Location name Type* Total Location name Type* Total Dzaleka CAM 13,230 *CAM = Camps/centers; URB = Urban; RUR = Rural/dispersed/various. *CAM = Camps/centers; URB = Urban; RUR = Rural/dispersed/...... -
2005 UNHCR Statistical Yearbook Country Data Sheet - Malawi
30 Apr 2007 ... ... E. POPULATION OF CONCERN IN MALAWI -- MAIN LOCATIONS, END OF 2005 Data generally not available for industrialized countries Location name Type* Total Location name Type* Total Dzaleka CAM 5,460 Luwani ...... -
77th meeting of the Standing Committee - regional update Southern Africa
12 Mar 2020 ... ... In Malawi, worsening food shortages continued to impact 44,000 refugees and asylum-seekers in Dzaleka refugee camp as food rations from WFP were reduced by half due to insufficient funding in 2019. In ...... -
UNHCR Global Report 2003 - Southern Africa Regional Overview
1 Jun 2004 ... ... The Luwani camp in Mwanza district was set up to relieve the congested situation in Dzaleka refugee camp. In 2003, UNHCR relocated 1,000 refugees from Dzaleka to Luwani. In collaboration with national ...... -
UNHCR Global Appeal 2006 - Southern Africa Regional Overview
1 Dec 2005 ... ... for Rwandan refugees in the United Republic of Tanzania in 2002. The majority live in Dzaleka camp. ... in Luwani camp and at the same time direct a slow phase-out of assist- ance to Dzaleka camp. ...... -
UNHCR Global Report 2005 - Southern Africa Regional Overview
1 Jun 2006 ... ... provided assistance to 4,200 refugees and asylum-seekers living in Dzaleka and Luwani camps. ... Refugee Women were integrated in all aspects of UNHCR’s assis- tance in Dzaleka and Luwani camps. ...... -
UNHCR Global Report 2009 - Southern Africa subregional overview
1 Jun 2010 ... ... The majority came from Burundi, the DRC and Rwanda, and about 10,000 lived in Dzaleka refugee camp. An assessment among the refugees over 18 years old indicated that 59 per cent would opt for ...... -
UNHCR Global Appeal 2008-2009 - Southern Africa subregional overview
1 Dec 2007 ... ... Almost half of them lived in Luwani camp until the Government decided to close the site in May 2007 and relocate its residents to Dzaleka camp. The Government closed the camp, which was located near ...... -
UNHCR Global Appeal 2013 Update - Southern Africa subregional overview
1 Dec 2012 ... ... UNHCR will use a participatory and community-based approach to deliver basic services to refugees in Dzaleka Camp, and will work to achieve durable solutions, including resettlement when required and ......