In Malawi, the number of Congolese refugees continues to increase. They are fleeing the fighting in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Faced with this situation, the World Food Programme, the WFP, is sounding the alarm. The only refugee camp in the country has a capacity of 10,000 places, but there are five times more of them crammed into place.
About forty kilometers from Lilongwe, the capital, the Dzaleka camp is home to 56,000 refugees, 62% of whom are Congolese. They live alongside Burundians, Rwandans, Ethiopians and Somalis. In recent months, clashes have resumed in eastern DRC between the M23 and the Congolese armed forces. The return of this defeated rebellion in 2013 brought a wave of arrivals to the overcrowded Dzaleka camp.
A humanitarian situation that has become untenable according to the World Food Programme. Recently, 600 families, out of the 11,000 in the camp, had to be removed from the lists of beneficiaries of food distributions, for lack of means. And according to the representative of the Congolese community in the Dzaleka camp, some refugees sleep on an empty stomach and risk starving to death.
According to the WFP, food insecurity is one of the main consequences of the displacement of civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since fighting escalated on October 20, 2022, at least 183,000 Congolese have been displaced.
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