Our work in Mozambique focuses on conflict sensitivity assistance to national and international organisations delivering humanitarian and development aid in the north of the country.
What we are doing in Mozambique
The ongoing armed conflict in Cabo Delgado, Northern Mozambique, is providing a set of challenges to national and international organisations in delivering effective humanitarian and development assistance. A lack of conflict sensitive practice by some agencies has led to unintended consequences and hindered the delivery of aid to those who need it most.
Peaceful Change initiative is working to strengthen conflict sensitivity expertise amongst national and international humanitarian and development organisations in Northern Mozambique. We do this by supporting agencies to conduct and make sense of conflict analysis, to identify and prioritise conflict sensitivity risk and design mitigation strategies, and to design, adapt and monitor projects based on this knowledge.
We have been working here since 2022.
Why we are working in Mozambique
Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado region has been experiencing conflict since 2017. Militants aligned to Islamic extremist groups have killed over 4500 people and displaced more than a million. Whilst some of these militants came from neighbouring countries, Mozambicans have also joined in significant numbers, motivated by their socio and economic marginalisation as inhabitants one of Mozambique’s poorest regions. Recent discoveries of natural resource wealth in Cabo Delgado are perceived to have benefitted only the richest elites.
Against this backdrop, local and international humanitarian and development agencies have been continuing to deliver much-needed support to communities across Cabo Delgado. This support has included providing food aid, building shelter for displaced people and supporting healthcare and education. However, delivering humanitarian and development work in conflict is a complex endeavour, fraught with the risk of exacerbating tensions by benefitting one group over the other, or having materials and supplies diverted by armed groups or powerful elites.