‘They Took Away My Biggest Gift in Life – My Family’

“These are the lucky ones, as thousands are still stranded in Palma, hiding and not knowing if they will be able to escape,” said Margarida Loureiro, the head of office in Pemba for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

Together with local authorities and partners, UNHCR has been screening and verifying details of the recent arrivals and conducting protection assessments to identify the most vulnerable people in need of urgent assistance. Those identified are referred to various services and helped to trace and reunite with family members.

Nearly 80 per cent of separated people are women and children. Partner staff are also being trained on protecting internally displaced people (IDPs) from gender-based violence and sexual exploitation.

The majority of the displaced families are staying with relatives and friends but for people like Suabo who have no relatives, they are staying at a transit center set up by the government, where they receive food assistance, sleeping mats and blankets. As of 6 April, approximately 250 displaced people were still living at the transit center.

Suabo is currently in limbo as she wonders what will happen next. She is sad and worried after being separated from her husband and their three other children.

“I wish for the conflict to stop. I don’t want other people to go through what I am going through.”

“They took away my home, my belongings, but worst of all, they took away my biggest gift in life – my family,” she said.

Like Suabo, Lucia also fled by boat and is currently staying at the transit center. An environmentalist and NGO worker, she worries about the future and she is scared to return home.

“We need help from humanitarian organizations. There are so many women and children here separated from their families,” she said.

Before the latest attack in Palma, escalating violence in Cabo Delgado had already displaced nearly 700,000 Mozambicans to other parts of Cabo Delgado, Niassa and Nampula provinces, the vast majority living with host families, whose scarce resources are already stretched.

The situation has severely impacted health, water and shelter facilities as well as access to food in the region. The harrowing humanitarian crisis is compounded by an already fragile situation of chronic underdevelopment, consecutive climatic disasters and recurrent disease outbreaks including, most recently, COVID-19.

While UNHCR and partners continue to scale up assistance to the thousands who have been displaced, Suabo hopes that peace will return to her hometown.

“I wish for the conflict to stop. I don’t want other people to go through what I am going through right now,” she said.

*SOURCE: UNHCR. Go to ORIGINAL.
2021 Human Wrongs Watch