Funding cuts push Malawi’s Dzaleka Refugee Camp to the brink

The UNHCR has been the backbone of refugee support at Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi since its establishment in 1994. However, funding for the United Nations organisation has dropped, resulting in a 40 per cent reduction in its spending on the camp. Conditions are deteriorating for the 56,000 refugees at the facility, yet they are also not allowed to live or work outside.

“This is the only home I have known all my life,” said Eliane, who is using an alias, in a phone call to FairPlanet from Dzaleka Refugee Camp in central Malawi, about 41 kilometres from the Capital City, Lilongwe.

“It has built my life and the lives of thousands of young people like me. Not all the conditions have been ideal, but we have always felt safe and happy here, which is what a home gives its children,” she said.

She mentioned observing “disturbing” developments recently. Some camp youths who have been working as interpreters and those who have been helping to provide security at the camp have been withdrawn.
Eliane said these were volunteer tasks, but those involved received a small allowance, which proved essential to life at the camp.

“And I hear that in September [2025], some doctors at our health centre will leave because their contracts will not be renewed. There is gloom here about what’s going on,” she said.

On August 6, 2025, a local newspaper reported that services at the health centre, supported by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), were disrupted as its workers put down their tools after not being paid for three months.

A senior official from the government health office in whose jurisdiction the health facility is located confirmed the interruption. He said his office was holding discussions with the workers and partners to allow the health centre to continue operating.

Anxiety about the future is growing among the refugees at the camp, the only such camp in Malawi. This follows a drop in funding to the UNHCR, the backbone of support for refugees at the facility over the past three decades, and the resulting scale-down of its operations at the camp.

The Genesis OF DZALEKA REFUGEE CAMP

Where the camp sits today used to be a site for one of Malawi’s most notorious political prisons during a dictatorship regime between 1964 and 1994. The prison was infamous for torturing inmates. It was named Dzaleka, a modification of a vernacular language expression, which means ‘I will never do it again’.

In 1994, the Government of Malawi and the UNHCR established the Dzaleka Refugee Camp to provide a haven for individuals fleeing genocide, violence, and wars in Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Originally designed to accommodate between 10,000 and 12,000 refugees, the camp had 56,212 individuals by October 31, 2024. This figure consisted of 15,585 households keeping 35,620 refugees, 20,588 asylum seekers, and four individuals classified as "other of concern,”according to UNHCR.

The DRC population is the largest at the camp, at 36,469, followed by Burundi at 12,291 and Rwanda at 7,019. Somalians and Ethiopians comprise a minority population. 

In UNHCR’s projections based on newborn babies and the flow of new arrivals, the camp is expected to have 59,564 individuals in 2025, rising to 63,028 in 2026.

The FUNDING CRISIS

Since its establishment 31 years ago, UNHCR has been providing “protection, essential services, and pursuing durable solutions amid rising needs and limited resources” to the camp, but now the already inadequate funding has declined further.

A funding update from the end of July shows that UNHCR Malawi’s financial requirement for 2025 was $26.3 million. As of 31 July 2025, only 18 per cent of that budget had been funded.

In an email to FairPlanet, UN resident coordinator for Malawi Rebecca Adda-Dontoh, said that globally, UNHCR is suffering funding challenges due to an increase in humanitarian crises, a development she said has placed a strain on available donor financing. Like many other countries hosting refugees, she said these global funding constraints have hit Malawi.
Adda-Dontoh said the reduction in UNHCR financing has intensified, particularly over the past two years, stretching the organisation’s capacity to maintain full-scale operations at Dzaleka Refugee Camp.

“Overall, there has been a global reduction of nearly one-third in UNHCR’s spending authority this year compared to 2024. This translates to a 40 per cent reduction in Malawi,” she said. 

This has resulted in UNHCR cutting back its presence and support at the camp. It has stopped general non-food distributions, reduced gender-based violence protection responses and laid off key protection staff such as paralegals.

“However, UNHCR prioritises life-saving and critical interventions through national partners. The future of these activities will depend on the availability of resources and continued partnerships with government and local actors,” said Adda-Dontoh. 

The Funding cut Fallout

Innocent Magambi, chief executive officer of Inua Advocacy, a refugees’ rights organisation that operated from the camp until the government expelled it last year, said that beyond basic humanitarian response, UNHCR has advocated for refugees’ rights, supported resettlement programs, facilitated documentation and registration of refugees, and coordinated partners responding to their needs.

“Without the UNHCR’s presence, many refugees at Dzaleka would not have survived or accessed any form of international protection,” Magambi told FairPlanet. 

A former refugee from the DRC, he described the decline in donor funding to the United Nations organisation as “deeply worrying” as it would lead to increased suffering and desperation in the camp.

“When people lose hope that their basic needs will be met, they are more vulnerable to all sorts of exploitation. The risk is that as needs grow and support shrinks, we will see more unrest, crime and greater human suffering,” he said.

A catalyst for HUMAN TRAFFICKING

Magambi said the deterioration of conditions for refugees also risks worsening human trafficking at the camp. Previous investigations have uncovered “widespread exploitation of men, women and children” and exposed international human trafficking gangs operating from the camp.

According to Magambi, wherever poverty, desperation and weak oversight exist, human trafficking thrives.
He said at Dzaleka camp, the prevalent form of human trafficking has been the smuggling and trafficking of Ethiopian nationals by well-organised networks onward to South Africa and beyond.

“When funding is cut, oversight weakens even more. Desperate refugees with no food or opportunity are easy prey for traffickers promising a better life elsewhere only to exploit them horribly,” he said.

TRANSITION IS NOT WITHDRAWAL

Despite the funding constraints, the UNHCR “remains fully committed to its refugee protection mandate”, Adda-Dontoh said.
“The transition to a lighter operational footprint is not a withdrawal but a shift in how the organisation will work - focusing more on localisation, capacity-building and coordinated service delivery through national actors,” she told FairPlanet.

She hoped that Malawi would safeguard its track record of long-standing commitment” to welcoming and hosting asylum-seekers and refugees.

“We recommend continued efforts to integrate refugee needs into national development planning, mobilise domestic resources and strengthen national systems.

“The UN also encourages sustained dialogue and collaboration with humanitarian actors and partners to ensure coordinated responses and innovative financing,” she said.

ENCAMPMENT POLICY

Magambi said allowing refugees to work, move freely, and integrate into Malawian society would significantly reduce aid dependence and relieve the refugees.

He called on the Malawi government to honour its pledges to reform its refugee laws to provide refugees with free movement and integration. Currently, Malawi does not allow the refugees to leave the camp and settle outside.

In enforcement of that policy, between May and October 2023, the government undertook a heavily criticised operation when it detained and forcibly sent back to the camp refugees that were found operating in urban and rural centres of the country.

The Ministry of Homeland Security, which manages the affairs of refugees in Malawi, did not respond to our questions on its plans following UNHCR’s scaling down of operations at the camp. However, a high-ranking official in the ministry, Ivy Chihana, deputy commissioner for refugees, told a local radio station in May that the government might consider reviewing the Encampment Policy so that refugees can work outside the camp.

But she said such a shift in policy would take time.
Until such an uncertain time, refugees at the Dzaleka camp remain trapped in worsening living conditions, from which they cannot break free.

“We are very scared,” said Eliane.

“I have a degree, but I’m not allowed to work in Malawi. I can’t do business outside. Here we are watching interventions that have supported us all along collapsing on us. Yet we can’t escape,” she said.

Image by Ahmed Akacha.