Today, June 20th is World Refugees Day, but both Malawi Government and United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) have said there are no special events to commemorate the day.

In an interview yesterday, Ministry of Homeland Security Department of Refugees senior administration and operations manager Hilda Kausiwa said the department has taken this year’s World Refugees Day commemoration at a low scale, but could not disclose why that is the case.

Mozambican refugees at Kasipe camp in Mwanza in 2016

She said: “We are taking it this year on a low scale, looking at the way things are. So we planned that the minister will issue a statement. But we don’t have an open activity this year.”

UNHCR spokesperson Kenyi Emmanuel said the agency will also not hold any special activity in the country as part of commemorating the day due funding constraints.

He too refused to comment on the state of refugees in the country, saying UNHCR will issue a statement on the matter.

This year’s commemoration, whose theme is ‘Hope away from home’, comes at a time Malawi Government is relocating refugees from towns and cities to Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Dowa District.

The relocation has drawn mixed reactions with some civil society organisations faulting the Malawi Government’s stand.

On why Malawi seems to continue having an influx of refugees, especially from the Great Lakes Region, commissioner of refugees in Malawi, General Ignacio Maulana (retired) observed that the refugees problem is spread across the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) region.

In an interview yesterday, he said the number of refugees in Malawi is lower than in neighbouring countries and that some refugees found themselves in the country unintentionally.

“Malawi has a population of about 51 000 refugees which is lower compared to our neighbours such as Tanzania, Zambia and even in Zimbabwe. But considering the size of the country and economy, that is a very big figure,” said Maulana.

Minister of Homeland Security Ken Zikhale Ng’oma, the poster face of the relocation exercise, told The Nation yesterday that Malawi Government loses about K392 billion in potential revenue every five years because refugees operate businesses without business resident permits. He claimed that about 51 000 foreigners were doing businesses in the country without paying business resident permits on the pretext that they are refugees.

He said: “Our economy has been eroded a lot since 1994. In the villages, we have over 51 000 illegal immigrants that are coming in on the economic basis and they are doing businesses.”

In most countries, refugees do not operate businesses or stay outside designated refugee camps.

The UNHCR Global trends released last week show that about 108.4 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide at the end of 2022 due to persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order.

Low and middle income countries hosted 76 percent of the world’s refugees and other people in need of international protection.

The report further indicates that about 27.2 million asylum seekers came from Sub-Saharan Africa, while 25.3million were accommodated in the same region.

Last month, law enforcement agencies launched a sweeping exercise after asylum seekers and refugees defied an earlier government deadline of April 15 2023 to return to their designated campsites at Dzaleka.

World Refugee Day is an international day designated by the UN to honour refugees around the globe. It falls on June 20 and celebrates the strength and courage of people who have been forced to flee their home country to escape conflict or persecution.

The post Malawi, UNHCR in low key World Refugee Day first appeared on The Nation Online.