The World Health Organisation (WHO) needs 20.7 million dollars to provide humanitarian assistance to 434,000 people in Cabo Delgado province, in northern Mozambique.
According to a report by the Health Cluster – a WHO unit that joins forces to provide emergency support in various countries – a total of 16 districts need support, of which 16.7 million dollars will be used to help victims of terrorism, 2.6 million dollars for natural disasters and the rest for public health emergencies.
Recently, the United Nations warned that food insecurity has reached ‘unprecedented’ levels, with almost 5 million Mozambicans threatened by a lack of food, a situation made worse by a shortage of international funding. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) indicated that the country faces a significant funding gap, having raised only 13 per cent of the amount needed to respond to this crisis, an amount of less than 28.7 million dollars, out of the 14.1 billion meticals requested.
Since October 2017, Cabo Delgado, a province rich in natural gas, has been facing an armed rebellion that has caused thousands of deaths and generated a humanitarian crisis, resulting in more than a million internally displaced people.
In 2024 alone, at least 349 people died in attacks perpetrated by Islamic extremist groups in the province, representing an increase of 36% on the previous year, according to data recently released by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS), an academic institution of the US Department of Defense specialising in conflict analysis in Africa.
The most recent major attack took place on 10 and 11 May 2024, when around a hundred insurgents invaded and looted the district headquarters of Macomia, resulting in several deaths and intense fighting with the Mozambican Defence and Security Forces, supported by troops from Rwanda, who are assisting the country in fighting the rebels.
