UNHCR "deeply concerned about the escalating humanitarian crisis in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique"
Image: Programa Igual
The ‘Civic Space Barometer’, a study which analyses the closure of civic space, reveals enormous perceived restrictions on rights and freedoms in Pemba (Cabo Delgado), Morrumbala (Zambézia), Gorongosa (Sofala), Báruè (Manica) and Moatize (Tete), the five districts on whose citizens’ testimony the study is based.
The survey, conducted by the Institute of Social and Economic Studies (IESE), with the support of the IGUAL Program, implemented by CESC and released in Pemba recently, reveals restrictions on the right to information, the right to freedom of expression and concern for democracy.
For example, the percentage of respondents who think that “it is difficult for people to say what they think” varies between 30.3% and 45.5%. Respondents who think that “it is very difficult” for people to express their opinions show percentages varying between 16.7% and 38.9%. Meanwhile, the percentage of people who think that it is “easy” for people to say what they think varies between 2.3% and 9.2%.
In other words, no district had a percentage equal to or greater than 10% of respondents who thought it was easy to express opinions in Mozambique. “As you move up the scale of the government structure, citizens feel less free to express their ideas or disagreement with decisions made by government structures,” the report comments.
The percentage of respondents who sometimes feel intimidated by the government and/or political parties is very worrying, varying between 8.6% (Báruè) and 27.1% (Pemba). Another revelation is the average 18.3% of respondents who think that traditional leaders and neighbourhood secretaries ‘sometimes’ tend to force people in their communities to vote for a certain political party.
More than half of those surveyed never feel free to join others in publicly protesting.
Regarding the question related to joining political parties, the percentage of respondents who consider it “difficult” to join an opposition party is the highest: it varies between 27.2% and 47.8%, with the general average being 40. 4%, against 26.7% of those who consider it “easy” to join an opposition political formation.
Regarding elections, data show that trust in electoral processes is very low. More than half of those surveyed (around 58%) have little or no trust in electoral processes, a reality that weakens the legitimacy of elected governments and the institutions which result from elections.
In relation to the political regime, 53.9% of respondents in the five districts surveyed consider that democracy is preferable to any other type of government. An interesting fact is that the percentage of respondents who prefer democracy is above 53% in all districts except Pemba, where it is only 34.2%.
Pemba also produced the highest percentage of respondents who do not care about the type of government they have, with 42.8%.
“There is a certain closure of civic space characterised by the popular feeling that the government controls formal spaces for participation and circulation of information. The percentage of citizens who feel forced to participate in political party meetings is relatively high, standing at 20%,” the IESE study details.
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