Mozambique

When terrorists attacked Cabo Delgado nine years ago on 5 October 2017, the Mozambique Defence Armed Forces (FADM) was taken by surprise, despite its three decades of experience fighting armed conflicts inside the country. … The FADM has since benefitted from substantial external training and efforts to improve logistics and equipment. But this has yet to translate into results on the ground, where communities still suffer inadequate security and human rights violations at the hands of state forces.

Foreign training has strengthened the army, but abuses against civilians undermine the community support needed to defeat insurgents.

The European Union (EU) and Mozambique have decided to deepen their cooperation in the fields of security and defense, with a particular focus on combating terrorism in the northern province of Cabo Delgado.

The governments of Mozambique and France reaffirmed on Tuesday, in Paris, their commitment to strengthen cooperation in the areas of Defence and Security, with special emphasis on combating terrorism.

1 September marked the second anniversary of the EU Military Assistance Mission in Mozambique (EUMAM Moz) … Since it was mandated and became operational, EUMAM Moz has provided more than 70 programmes to 2 000 Mozambican military personnel across any number of military disciplines. These include leadership, logistics, legal and gender advisory support, civil-military co-operation, military health and engineering, counter-terrorism and communications.

The UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Ben Saul, urged the government of Mozambique on Friday to strengthen its efforts to protect human rights when combating terrorism and to address the root causes of the conflict.

Rwanda will withdraw its counterinsurgency troops from Mozambique if the mission’s foreign backers don’t maintain “sustainable funding,” the foreign minister said on Saturday. … Last week, the U.S. State Department imposed visa restrictions on “several senior Rwandan officials for fueling instability” in eastern Congo, intensifying pressure on the East African country after sanctions that targeted Rwanda’s military.

Despite sustained counter-insurgency operations and foreign troop deployments in Mozambique’s north, armed groups remain active and capable of adapting to evolving security pressures. This persistence underscores the limitations of a security-first approach and highlights the need to reconsider dialogue as a core component of conflict resolution. 

The ongoing emergency in northern Mozambique continues to worsen as prolonged attacks by non-state armed groups in Nampula trigger one of the largest displacement surges of the year, the UN warned on Friday. According to the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, 107,000 people have fled their homes in recent weeks, pushing total displacement in just the past four months to 330,000.

Intensified attacks on villages and the rapid spillover of the conflict into previously safe districts force tens of thousands of people to flee across northern Mozambique, with close to 100,000 displaced in the past fortnight alone, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says.