A group of 23 international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) warned today of the risk of “forgetting” the humanitarian crisis caused by armed violence in Cabo Delgado province, northern Mozambique.
“There is a very real risk that, with the crisis now in its fifth year, Cabo Delgado will completely fall off the international radar,” the NGOs said in a statement.
In the note, the underwriters regret the budget deficit for assistance to displaced persons in that province.
“The humanitarian response in Cabo Delgado is seriously underfunded. We are not receiving enough funding to respond to the humanitarian crisis,” said 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, being limited only to “one-off interventions”.
“It is disappointing for us, as humanitarian organizations, to have to interrupt our efforts to meet the needs of the affected populations and witness the fact that their basic needs are not being met or satisfied”, they lamented, warning that the situation in the province “is in a state of flux”. risk of becoming a forgotten crisis.
The organizations asked for even greater flexibility in issuing humanitarian visas to allow access to specialists in thematic areas of the response to Cabo Delgado, aiming to “improve the quality” of assistance.
The group suggests that Mozambique take advantage of the fact that it is a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council to “call the attention of donors and the international community to finance 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 Islamic State extremist group.
There are 784,000 internally displaced persons due to the conflict, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and about 4,000 deaths, according to the ACLED conflict registry project.
Since July 2021, an offensive by government troops with the support of Rwanda, which was later joined by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), allowed the recovery of areas where there was a presence of rebels, but their flight has led to new attacks in other areas. districts used as a passage or temporary refuge.
