Mozambique: Cabo Delgado, Nampula & Niassa Humanitarian Snapshot, as of June 2025
Photo: O País
Catholic bishops on Thursday told the Mozambican president, Filipe Nyusi, their concern over the vulnerability of young people to recruitment by insurgent groups, particularly those carrying out armed attacks in the north of the country.
“It was a private meeting that we requested to talk with the president and bring some opinions of the Bishops’ Conference of Mozambique [CEM] on the situation of the country in various aspects, but we ended up addressing issues relating to the situation of society in general,” said Lúcio Andrice Muandula, bishop of Xai-Xai and president of CEM, cited in a statement from the Mozambican presidency.
According to the document, among the issues discussed were the needs of the Mozambican youth, a point raised at a press conference last week by the bishops when they warned that the marginalisation of young people could lead to the spread of armed insurgency in the country.
“The Church would like the youth to live a different life from the one they are living, so we encourage the people, in particular the youth, to cultivate their hopes and dreams and work to make them come true,” Lúcio Andrice Muandula said.
At Friday’s press conference, the bishops said that most of the youth, especially in rural areas, feel marginalised by political power, which results from the absence of a common project for the country’s development.
“It is easy to entice people, full of life and dreams, but without prospects and who feel unjustified, victims of a culture of corruption, to adhere to the proposal of a new social order imposed with violence,” the bishop of Chimoio and spokesman for the CEM, João Carlos, said on Friday.
Armed groups have terrorised Cabo Delgado since 2017, with some attacks claimed by the jihadist group Islamic State, in a wave of violence that has led to more than 2,500 deaths, according to the ACLED conflict registration project, and 714,000 displaced people, according to the Mozambican government.
The most recent attack was on 24 March against the town of Palma, causing dozens of deaths and injuries, in a still ongoing assessment.
The Mozambican authorities regained control of the town, but the attack led oil company Total to abandon indefinitely the site of the gas project scheduled to start production in 2024 and on which many of Mozambique’s economic growth expectations for the next decade are anchored.
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