UNHCR socio-economic assessment of refugees and asylum seekers in Dzaleka and Luwani camps (2017)

Why this dataset matters

This is one of the strongest public survey references for Dzaleka when the question goes beyond a simple population total. It is especially helpful for work on:

• livelihoods and income sources
• access to services and assistance
• household vulnerability and coping strategies
• education, economic activity, and subjective wellbeing

Because the survey covers both Dzaleka and Luwani, it also gives researchers a way to compare camp contexts instead of treating Malawi’s refugee response as a single homogeneous setting.

What the UNHCR record says

The UNHCR catalog describes this as a socio-economic assessment conducted to support multi-year planning and programming in Malawi. The public metadata states that fieldwork took place in March 2017 and that the release covers 1,026 refugee households, with 802 from Dzaleka and 224 from Luwani.

The entry also makes clear that the public release is anonymized and that the unit of analysis is both household and individual. That makes it a strong reference point for anyone building secondary analysis, literature reviews, or evidence notes about livelihoods and vulnerability.

How to use it well

• Use the catalog entry first to understand scope, sampling, and access conditions before quoting any figures.
• Treat this as a survey dataset, not a live operational feed. It is valuable for structured analysis, but it is not meant to replace current operational dashboards.
• If you need broader Dzaleka context, pair it with the other external dataset pages in this catalog and with the general Dzaleka Refugee Response Reference Pack.