A group of 23 international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) warned today, August 24, against the risk of “forgetting” the humanitarian crisis caused by armed violence in the province of Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique.
“There is a very real risk that, with the crisis now in its fifth year, Cabo Delgado will fall completely off the international radar,” the NGOs said in a statement.
In the note, the signatories lament the budget deficit for assistance to the displaced of war in that province.
“The humanitarian response in Cabo Delgado is seriously underfunded. We are not receiving enough funding to respond to the humanitarian crisis,” state the organizations, which include Save The Children and Plan International.
According to the group, humanitarian assistance to Cabo Delgado is “often” interrupted due to lack of funds or resources, limiting itself only to “punctual interventions”.
“It is disappointing for us, as humanitarian organizations, to have to interrupt our efforts to address the needs of the affected populations and witness the fact that their basic needs are neither addressed nor met,” they lamented, warning that the situation in the province “is at risk of becoming a forgotten crisis.”
The organizations also called for greater flexibility in issuing humanitarian visas to allow access to specialists in the thematic areas of the response to Cabo Delgado, aiming to “improve the quality” of assistance.
The group suggests that Mozambique take advantage of being a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council to “draw the attention of donors and the international community to fund the humanitarian response in Cabo Delgado.”
Cabo Delgado province is rich in natural gas, but has been terrorized since 2017 by armed rebels, with some attacks claimed by the extremist group Islamic State.
There are 784,000 internally displaced people due to the conflict, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and about 4,000 deaths, according to the ACLED conflict registration project.
Since July 2021, an offensive by government troops with Rwandan support, later joined by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), has allowed areas where rebels had been present to recover, but their flight has provoked new attacks in other districts used as passage or temporary refuge.
