Prostitution and Abuse: The Women Caught in Malawi’s Growing Settlement

Weeping flows down the refugee’s face as she takes off her glove. Her dominant hand is scarred by a faded, uneven scarring. Her fingers are stiff and unnaturally bent.

Francine turned to sex work to survive soon after she came by herself at Malawi’s Dzaleka shelter in 2015, having travelled there from Burundi.

On Christmas Eve in 2022, a client declined payment. When she blocked the doorway, he took a very hot saucepan of beans and threw it at her, scalding her hand and chest.

Daily existence in Malawi has become much more difficult, with budget reductions by international donors resulting in most having only one meal a day.

At the same time, the opportunities of relocation to countries in the west have been lowered 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 deserted by her mother, Francine lived in Burundi with an family member involved in politics, who was gunned down in 2014.

Traumatized by her past, the 29-year-old mother of children aged two and nine believes her life would be at risk if she returned to Burundi.

She wonders why she has never been selected for relocation.

Malawi, one of the world’s least developed countries, has a tradition of hosting refugees.

Dzaleka camp was built on the outskirts of the capital, Lilongwe, in 1994. The packed camp, which has become an shantytown, was meant to host 10,000 people.

Now, more than 58,000 refugees live there. About 60% of them are from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), from where up to 200 more arrive monthly.

Malawi’s “shelter rule” prevents refugees from staying officially or working outside Dzaleka, making them especially exposed to funding cuts.

Financial support have been lowered to 50% of what is needed for food.

All of the years that we have been here, UNHCR has never thought about us

The financial strains have led to a increase in sex work, abuse at home cases and children taking things.

Anne, a mother of seven, still helps and thinks that she sees four to six cases of domestic violence a week, twice the number of two years ago.

Malawi is looking into building a new camp near the Tanzanian border. However, Anne and other refugees say they want to stay in Dzaleka.

The government is also considering changing the law to allow refugees to work outside camps.

Judith fled Lubumbashi in the southern DRC in 2016, after gunmen 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 missing parent.

* Names have been changed to protect their identity