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Tears stream down Francine’s* face as she takes off her glove. Her right hand is covered by a pale, mottled burn scar. Her digits are stiff and deformed.

She began sex work to make ends meet soon after she came by herself at Malawi’s Dzaleka refugee camp in 2015, having fled there from Burundi.

On December 24 in 2022, a client refused to pay. When she stood in the doorway, he grabbed a scalding saucepan of beans and flung it at her, injuring her hand and chest.

Living conditions in Malawi has become much more difficult, with financial decreases by international donors resulting in most eating just once a day.

At the same time, the opportunities of resettlement to countries in the west have been lowered from small 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 uncle involved in politics, who was shot 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 considered for resettlement.

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 densely populated camp, which has become an shantytown, was intended to host 10,000 people.

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 come monthly.

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

Cash payments have been cut 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, domestic violence cases and children theft.

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

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 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 man who left.

* Names have been changed to protect their identity