🔗 Share this article Survival Sex and Violence: The Women Caught in Malawi’s Growing Settlement Tears roll down her face as she removes her glove. Her dominant hand is scarred by a faded, uneven burn scar. Her joints are unbending and unnaturally bent. She began sex work to survive soon after she reached at Malawi’s Dzaleka settlement in 2015, having travelled there from Burundi. On December 24 in 2022, a client wouldn’t pay. When she stood in the doorway, he took a scalding saucepan of beans and hurled it at her, injuring her hand and chest. The woman says she has never been reviewed for relocation Daily existence in Malawi has become more challenging, with funding cuts by global organizations resulting in most consuming food only one time a day. At the same time, the opportunities of resettlement to countries in the west have been reduced from limited to distant. I see other people going, who are in good health … I ask myself, ‘Why is it that I don’t get helped like others?’ After being abandoned by her mother, Francine lived in Burundi with an relative involved in politics, who was shot in 2014. Haunted by her experiences, the adult mother of children aged two and nine believes her life would be at risk if she returned to Burundi. She questions why she has never been selected for relocation. The camp was established in 1994 to shelter Rwandans fleeing violence Malawi, one of the world’s poorest countries, has a tradition of hosting refugees. Dzaleka camp was built on the perimeter of the capital, Lilongwe, in 1994. The overcrowded camp, which has become an shantytown, was designed to host 10,000 people. The camp manager, who oversees Dzaleka, says the number of new people could make the camp unsustainable Now, more than 58,000 refugees stay there. About 60% of them are from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), from where up to 200 more enter monthly. Malawi’s “resettlement law” prevents refugees from residing lawfully or working outside Dzaleka, making them especially exposed to funding cuts. Financial support have been reduced to 50% of what is needed for food. Anne, now a unpaid helper, says she sees up to six victims of household harm a week All of the years that we have been here, UNHCR has never thought about us The budget issues have led to a surge in sex work, abuse at home cases and children theft. Anne, a mother of seven, still assists and thinks that she sees four to six cases of domestic violence a week, twice the number of two years ago. After Judith’s parents were shot when she was 14, she had to become a prostitute to support her three siblings Malawi is considering building a new camp near the Tanzanian border. However, Anne and other refugees say they want to stay in Dzaleka. The government is also evaluating changing the law to allow refugees to work outside camps. Judith fled Lubumbashi in the southern DRC in 2016, after attackers killed her parents. Just 14, she was left looking after her three younger siblings. She had to turn to sex work and has a four-year-old child with an absent father. * Names have been changed to protect their identity