2023 Mozambique Humanitarian Response Plan (February 2023)

Crisis Context and Impact

In 2023, the humanitarian response in northern Mozambique will target 1.6 million people of the two million people in the most critical need of assistance and protection in Cabo Delgado, Nampula and Niassa due to the continued impact of armed conflict, violence and insecurity in the region. The priority is to provide urgent life-saving assistance to those who have borne the brunt of the conflict. In addition, humanitarian partners will provide life-sustaining support for people whose access to essential services have been compromised by the conflict as well as address the protection risks and needs of people in need. The people in need caseload in 2023 is 25 per cent higher than in 2022 and includes 976,000 people displaced by the conflict, some 400,000 people in host communities and 170,000 people who have returned to their home districts in the course of the year. More than half of the people in need are children and more than 60 percent of adults are women.

The 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan for Mozambique seeks U$513 million to meet the needs of 1.6 million people targeted for assistance.
A total of 1.1 million people were assisted between January and October 2022 in northern Mozambique, out of 1.2 million people targeted. 63.5 per cent of the $388.5 million required has been received ($246.7 million). The humanitarian community thanks the donors for the generous contributions to the humanitarian response in 2022 and counts on its renewed and sustained support in 2023.
Humanitarian partners will prioritize assistance based on the severity of needs identified. The 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan will focus support in the 13 districts in Cabo Delgado with highest needs and displaced population level, followed by the 16 districts with severe needs and the 24 districts in Nampula and Niassa provinces with moderate needs. Clusters will monitor the level of needs according to specific vulnerabilities and adjust the response as needed.

The 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan will have a multi-sectoral approach, prioritizing areas in a way that allows sectors to leverage each other, and in doing so, achieve higher impact, as well as focus on ensuring flexible and agile mechanisms to guarantee that the response adapts to the changing needs and context. Regular situational awareness, monitoring of and negotiation for humanitarian access, along with maintenance of landing strips across northern Mozambique to facilitate humanitarian access in hard-to-reach areas, will be critical, together with the expansion of rapid response mechanisms to allow for a more consistent response.

Factoring seasonality in the response planning is one of the key components of the 2023 HRP. Extreme weather events including floods, cyclones and droughts occur regularly, with their frequency and intensity increasing due to climate change. In the lean season family needs increase putting people at risk of acute food insecurity as access to agricultural products and fishing decreases.
The humanitarian community will strive to deliver essential services to an increased number of people in need. Building on the efforts done in 2022, humanitarian partners will continue pursuing localisation efforts to strengthen partnerships with national organisations on the ground to ensure the greatest reach of the response. The continuation of humanitarian air service remains of fundamental importance to establish more deep field presence in strategic locations.

In 2023, humanitarian actors will seek greater linkages and collaboration with development partners. Efforts will include identifying complementarities with the Resilience and Integrated Development Plan for the North (Programa de Resiliência e Desenvolvimento Integrado do Norte - PREDIN) focused on the building or rehabilitation of public and private services and infrastructure, such as public administration buildings, health and education facilities, access roads, energy and telecommunication systems, water supplies, markets and shops. Clusters will strengthen their efforts to increase national sectors’ counterparts role and leadership; efforts will be redoubled to ensure the inter-operability of information management platforms between humanitarian and development actors and joint planning and operational coordination will be pursued to facilitate decision making.

While some areas became accessible to humanitarian organisations throughout 2022, non-State armed groups (NSAGs) continue to destabilise pockets of territory. As the Government regained and maintained control of coastal towns of Cabo Delgado, in June,
NSAGs began shifting operations into the southern and western districts as well as into neighbouring Nampula province. This generated new wave of displacement and impacted the provision of humanitarian assistance.

In 2022, the number of people displaced increased by 21 per cent rising from 784,000 (February) to 946,000 people (June).¹ While some 62,228 IDPs were recorded in newly assessed locations that had become accessible, the net increase in displacement stood at approximately 100,000 IDPs. Seventy-nine percent of displaced persons are women and children who bear the brunt of the crisis, facing sexual violence and other forms of abuse while fleeing horrific brutality in search of safety.

Displacement is placing a heavy burden on host communities who, living just above self-subsistence, have been sharing their scant resources with displaced people in solidarity. The majority of the displaced people (70 per cent) live in host communities while 30 per cent in displacement sites. As people continue to be displaced, solidarity is reaching breaking point and tensions among communities are increasing. Displaced families living in urban and rural contexts, and in site and out of site settings, must receive the assistance they need to survive, support to host communities must also be provided.

The violence against civilians has generated a complex protection crisis where civilians continue to be killed, and subjected to sexual violence, abductions, enforced disappearances, with destruction of property including schools, health centres and places of worship.² With pockets of insecurity persisting in areas of Cabo Delgado due to NSAG activity, people have been forced to flee their homes multiple times seeking safety, family reunification or better livelihood opportunities. Gender-based violence, including sexual exploitation and abuse are major concerns for displaced women, girls, and boys.
Immediate humanitarian assistance must be provided to women and girls released and/or liberated from the NSAG along with a dignified reintegration and rehabilitation.

In the course of 2022, some people displaced by the conflict have spontaneously returned to areas reclaimed by the Government with support from international forces. Assisting population spontaneously returning remains a key priority, particularly as their vulnerability is likely to increase during the agricultural lean season.
As of July 2022, an estimated 140,000 people returned to their areas of origin in Cabo Delgado. Safety audits in areas of return have indicated that people have returned because of perception of increased security in areas of return as well as poor living conditions and a lack of access to basic services (because of distance or lack of appropriate civil documentation and inability of those services to cater for an increased number of people) and employment prospects in displaced communities.

Humanitarian actors advocate for a principled return of IDPs in line with protection and humanitarian assistance standards in accordance with International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.
Ensuring that returns are sustainable entails ensuring that IDPs are returning voluntarily in safety and dignity, and simultaneously adequate assistance to vulnerable IDPs in their areas of displacement and place of origin is provided.

Conflict has heightened food insecurity and malnutrition as more families have been forced to abandon their homes and fields.
In conflict-affected Cabo Delgado, nearly 1.15 million people in are suffering from acute food insecurity. In April 2022, the food basket was reduced to less than 40 per cent of the recommended minimum daily caloric needs as a result of less funding available for the response and rising demands. Mozambique has high levels of stunting among children, with 43 percent of children under five years affected, which is higher than the average for the African region (29 percent) and among the highest in the world. Recent nutrition analysis indicates sustained levels of acute malnutrition nationally, and in the districts affected by conflict and cyclones. Country-level projection shows that over 382,686 children need lifesaving treatment for acute malnutrition. Nampula, Zambezia, and Cabo Delgado are the provinces with the highest wasting caseload, accounting for 60 per cent of total admissions in 2022. A general deterioration of nutrition conditions is expected in the first quarter of 2023, with a projected 98,440 children under five years old and 7,884 pregnant and lactating women in need of lifesaving treatment for wasting in Cabo Delgado (IPC AMN, 2022).

Many conflict-affected communities are struggling to cope with the cumulative consequences of other shocks such as climate change and rising inflation, food and energy crises. Mozambique is among the top three countries in Africa most exposed to extreme climate shocks. Northern Mozambique has been hit by two cyclones, three tropical storms and flooding in the last three years. The crisis in Ukraine is also impacting the food security of people. Mozambique imports approximately 30 per cent of wheat from Russia and 8 per cent from Ukraine (OECD). Fuel prices increased by more than 10 per cent and the increased cost of importing wheat and maize accounted for 1.2 per cent of gross national income in March 2022.³

As up to 1.7 million people in Mozambique are at risk of climate related disasters, the 2023 HRP would be reviewed in case a major natural disaster strikes the country or in case of a significant change in the overall humanitarian context. Meanwhile, the Humanitarian Country Team in Mozambique has agreed to adopt an anticipatory action approach to systematically link early warnings to actions designed to protect people at risk and their assets ahead of a hazard.