from ARMANDO DOMINGOS in Maputo, Mozambique
Mozambique Bureau
MAPUTO, (CAJ News) – THE number of people displaced by armed conflict, violence and insecurity in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province has risen to over 946 500 people.
The statistics for June 2022 represent an escalation from 784 564 people displaced as for the month of February in the same year.
At least 1,5 million people in northern Mozambique need life-saving and life-sustaining humanitarian assistance and protection due to the continued impact of the crisis.
The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) disclosed more than half of them are children and more than 60 percent of adults are women, who fled the conflict in search of safety.
Since early June, a string of attacks in Ancuabe and Chiure districts led to the displacement of 92 000 people within Cabo Delgado and to Nampula provinces.
Attacks have taken place in areas where no security incidents had been reported in the last two years.
Conflict has heightened food insecurity and malnutrition as families have been forced to abandon their homes and fields with poor rainfall compounding crop losses.
OCHA reported that many conflict-affected communities were struggling to cope with the cumulative consequences of other shocks such as climate change and rising inflation, food and energy crises.
. Northern Mozambique has been hit by two cyclones, three tropical storms and flooding in the last three years.
Mozambique imports approximately 30 percent of wheat from Russia and 8 percent from Ukraine, hence the current conflict between the two countries t may have a ripple effect on food and fuel prices spikes.
These would further deepen food insecurity. More than 4 000 people are estimated to have been killed during the Islamist insurgency that began in 2017.
– CAJ News