Maputo, 3 Jul (AIM) – The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has announced that 77 per cent of Mozambican children (citizens under the age of 18) are living in poverty and one in four girls have suffered physical violence before teaching their 18th birthday.
According to UNICEF, in its report entitled “Multidimensional Child Poverty in Mozambique (2014/15-2022)”, of 16.4 million children in the country, around 13 million are living in poverty, whether monetary, multidimensional or both.
“The situation makes it urgent to professionalize and expand the social workforce to ensure child protection and well-being in the country, given that multidimensional child poverty in Mozambique saw only small improvements between 2014/15 and 2022”, reads the report.
The document explains that about 6.8 million children (41.3 per cent) live in multidimensional poverty, “which means that their basic rights are not fully met.”
According to the UN Secretary-General’s report on children and armed conflicts for 2024, Mozambique was the country with the second highest percentage increase (525 per cent) in serious violations against children in armed conflicts in 2024. The county is second only to Lebanon.
This vast increase is certainly due to the war waged by Islamist terrorists against the Mozambican state in the northern province of Cabo Delgado.
Recently, Unicef also expressed concern at “the rising trend in reports of abduction, recruitment, and use of children by non-state armed groups, which are grave violations of children’s rights”, after three minors were murdered and eight were kidnapped by terrorists last May, in Magaia village, in the Cabo Delgado district of Muidumbe.
(AIM)
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