‘The memory comes back’: Abducted children return traumatised in Mozambique | Child Rights News

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June 2025 witnessed a deepening humanitarian crisis across northern Mozambique, according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA): The violence by al-Shabab “drove new displacement, disrupted essential services, severely restricted movement, exacerbated food insecurity, and impeded the delivery of life‑saving assistance”.

Sitoe explains that the conflict shifted dramatically in April 2024, when troops from the Southern African Development Community Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM) began withdrawing. That mission that began in October 2023 ended on July 15, 2024.

“This has been the most significant factor in the recent escalation of violence.”

According to the UN, 699,000 internally displaced people have already returned home. Returns have been driven by a general improvement in security, thanks to Mozambique’s army, local forces and the Rwandan army – but also by the poor conditions in displacement camps and the lack of basic services.

The latest wave of displacement occurred on June 24, when 568 people – including 324 children – fled al-Shabab attacks in Quinto Congresso village and sought refuge in the overcrowded district centre of Macomia. With this latest displacement, the number of people uprooted by the conflict since the beginning of the year has reached 48,000.

In 2023, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons (IDPs), Paula Gaviria Betancur, concluded that the process to enable people to return home was plagued by the absence of a structured, formal and transparent consultation mechanism for IDPs:

“Local authorities and community leaders have actively encouraged, pursued or exerted indirect pressure on IDPs to return to their places of origin either by promising humanitarian assistance or providing inaccurate or incomplete information about conditions in place of return, thereby hampering their ability to make an informed and fully voluntary decision,” she wrote in her end-of-mission statement.

Today, in a province of nearly two million, almost a quarter of the population – 461,000 – remains internally displaced, contending with food shortage, family separation, and severe psychological trauma.