MHRC calls for Malawi to engage UN as refugees bypass northern shelters

The Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC) has expressed concern that asylum seekers and refugees are not using the transit camps at Karonga and Chitipa as they enter Malawi, a situation it links to smuggling and human trafficking.

The commission presented its findings to the media, the Malawi Police Service, t

he Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services, the Department for Refugees and other stakeholders at Chatonda Lodge in Mzuzu.

MHRC Executive Secretary Habiba Osman said the commission had investigated refugee management, protection and rights in both districts after complaints that refugees were bypassing the border points at Chitipa and Karonga and reaching Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Dowa.

“We noted that the Transit Shelter in Karonga was not keeping asylum seekers and refugees. We also noted that asylum seekers and refugees have not been using the border points from April 2025.

“However, Dzaleka continues to receive refugees who claim to have come in through Karonga and Chitipa,” Osman said.

“This explains why we are having refugees being received without proper documentation and there is a lot of smuggling and human trafficking in these two districts,” she said.

Osman said the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had scaled back because of funding problems, and that the World Food Programme had reduced its aid to refugees in Malawi.

Together, she said, these cuts had crippled operations at the Karonga Transit Shelter.

The government cannot dictate how UNHCR runs its operations, she added, and Malawi should engage further with the UN, given its own economic burdens.

Modester Mwafulirwa, an officer at the Department for Refugees under the Ministry of Homeland Security, agreed that the shelters were not being used because there were no resources to run them.

She urged stakeholders to keep working together.