Thousands of people are fleeing Mozambique to neighboring Malawi to escape deadly post-election unrest in the country. The exodus comes after Mozambique’s Constitutional Council last week confirmed the ruling Frelimo party’s victory in the October vote.
The opposition condemned the result as fraudulent and the rubber-stamping of the apex court led to violent protests, vandalism and looting.
Ellen Kaosa is one of more than 13,000 Mozambicans who have sought asylum in Malawi’s southern border district of Nsanje. On the day the court validated the election results, he and some of his family members fled.
Kaosa told DW that his group crossed dangerous routes, including the Shire and Zambezi rivers, on boats to reach Malawi. She eventually arrived at a displacement camp in the village of Tengani, where she described conditions as “problematic”.
“Since Monday I have not eaten, I have children and other women are pregnant, the elderly and others with disabilities,” Kaosa said.
critical humanitarian situation
Kaosa told DW that the camp has no toilets, running water or mosquito nets, with well-wishers giving some of them only a cup of porridge upon arrival.
“During this rainy season, we are at risk of malaria and water-borne diseases,” he said.
“The whole reason we fled to Malawi is to protect our lives, but we appealed for help with food, bedding and a place to stay because it is too hot to live in a tent.”
Other women told DW that they could not find their husbands, fearing they may have gone their separate ways in Malawi.
“The situation remains critical as these individuals are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance,” Nsanje District Commissioner Dominic Mwandira said in a letter to the country’s commissioner for refugees, Reuters news agency reports.
Kaosa, like thousands of others who have fled to Malawi and Eswatini, the small state bordering Mozambique to the south, is hoping for peace so they can return to their homeland.
Call to give priority to vulnerable groups
Human rights campaigners have urged Malawi and the international community to prioritize the well-being of women, the elderly, people with disabilities and children.
Moses Mkandawire, director of the Nyika Institute, a think tank, said Mozambique’s lawmakers and opposition members should work together with the 16-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) and other stakeholders to promote dialogue, reconciliation and lasting peace.
“What we must do now as a nation, so what is required is to ensure that we provide them with food, blankets and other humanitarian assistance,” Mkandawire said, joining SADC colleagues in Mozambique in helping Malawi. Should do.
Malawian authorities confirmed that they are working with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to assess the humanitarian assistance needs of those fleeing Mozambique.
However, Malawi is already struggling with a shortage of food to feed its citizens, as well as the approximately 54,000 refugees – most of whom are from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi – who are being held in the Dzaleka refugee camp in central Malawi .
Malawi’s refugee conflict
To make matters more complicated, UNHCR is struggling to feed the existing refugees in Malawi due to a funding crisis at the UN World Food Program (WFP).
Nsanje district spokesman Robert Naija told DW that Malawi has provided hundreds of bags of maize flour and beans to feed the refugees.
He said that so far the government has provided shelter to asylum seekers mainly in primary schools, although they are being transferred to evacuation centers.
Malita Banda, a resident of Nsanje who helped some refugees find shelter, said that while Malawians also face hunger due to El Nino-induced weather, the government is struggling to meet the demands of those fleeing post-election violence in Mozambique. To meet this, our budget should be increased.
“My only request is that the Mozambican government should do something as soon as possible because it is likely that they will have difficulty finding food to eat on a daily basis,” Banda said.
FRELIMO party leader Daniel Chapo is expected to be sworn in as Mozambique’s president on January 15. The Constitutional Council said Chapo won the October 9 presidential election with about 65% of the vote. Opposition candidate Venancio Mondlane was said to have received 24% of the vote.
Meanwhile, Mondlane, who says the election results were rigged, said his fight for the recount is not over and he will issue a new call to action in the coming days.
Edited by: Keith Walker