Child abductions in Mozambique on the rise

Since the start of 2025, more than 120 children have been abducted in Mozambique’s northernmost province of Cabo Delgado. Human Rights Watch and the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) have documented a series of attacks on the villages of Mumu, Chibau, Ntotwe and Magaia, with aid workers warning that the true scale of child kidnappings is likely far higher than is being reported. 

Although six of the abducted children have since been released by the insurgents, many remain unaccounted for. Those who have returned struggle to reintegrate into communities still reeling from conflict.

Cabo Delgado’s recent spike in child abductions is neither incidental nor novel. It forms part of a long-standing tactic used by insurgent groups who struggle to recruit voluntary members and turn to conscripting children instead. Too often, these child abductions are treated as an unfortunate byproduct of conflict, rather than a deliberate targeting of a community’s most vulnerable members. As the conflict in Cabo Delgado enters a new phase, a more serious reckoning with the weaponisation of children is urgently required, one that demands a dedicated policy and peacebuilding response. 

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), along with its Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (2000), defines a child as any person below the age of 18 and explicitly bans their participation in conflict. From the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, the Allied Democratic Forces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province in Nigeria, abducting children is a well-known strategy for recruiting human capital and influence. 

Children are often targeted for their military utility, serving as fighters, porters, labourers and human shields. Young girls, in particular, are routinely subjected to gender-based violence, including forced marriages and sexual exploitation. Severed from their family structures, many children become unwilling instruments of insurgent agendas. All the while, active conflict zones continue to provide a steady stream of vulnerable children that have been orphaned by the conflict itself or left unaccompanied in overcrowded camps for internally displaced people. The use of children in warfare is not simply a byproduct of desperation, but a deliberate method of sustaining conflict economies. Recognising this practice as systemic is critical to designing effective peacebuilding and reintegration frameworks.

Since 2017, Mozambique’s resource-rich Cabo Delgado province has been afflicted by an Islamist insurgency that has killed at least 6  000 people and displaced about 1.4  million more. The kidnapping of civilians, particularly young women and girls, has long been a hallmark of the conflict. During a 2021 attack on the port town of Mocímboa da Praia, witnesses reported seeing insurgents abduct as many as four truckloads of women and girls. Five of these girls managed to escape after a multi-day trek through the bush and would later confirm that child abductions often lead to forced marriages, sexual violence and forced labour.

Reports show that the deliberate radicalisation of children in Cabo Delgado peaked from 2017 to 2021, before the deployment of significant foreign military support. As combat losses mounted and desertions spiked, insurgent groups shifted recruitment efforts to the Nampula coastal provinces. At its height, the insurgency was recruiting most of its members from mosques, markets, fishing villages and illegal mines, leveraging a combination of radical ideology and financial incentives. As security operations disrupted these networks, recruitment largely went underground, and more coercive and secretive methods replaced the earlier approaches. By late 2023, child soldiers had become a noticeable presence in the ongoing violence, valued by insurgents for being more obedient, loyal and cheaper to sustain than adult recruits.

One of the more unusual features of the Cabo Delgado conflict has been the high number of displaced people. As family units are disrupted and basic services collapse, thousands of unaccompanied children are left vulnerable to exploitation. Abductions are known to be a major risk in areas where displacement, poverty and disrupted social structures converge. This year alone, documented cases of child abduction in Cabo Delgado have shown a marked increase. In January, four girls and three boys were kidnapped in Mumu, with two of the children later being released. In March, six children were abducted in Chibau to carry looted goods, and in May, eight more were kidnapped near Magaia in Muidumbe district. Despite this uptick, these cases were largely overshadowed by Mozambique’s deadly post-electoral violence, the devastating effect of several cyclones and the United States’ foreign aid cuts. 

Despite decades of commitments on child protection from various regional bodies, responses to the insurgency in Cabo Delgado have remained overwhelmingly security-centric. The Southern African Development Community’s (SADC’s) Multinational Force Mission in Mozambique provided critical military assistance to the region between 2021 and 2024 but still lacks dedicated field reporting mechanisms or formal reintegration protocols for minors. 

This gap stands in contrast to SADC’s own Policy Framework on Child Protection and the African Union’s Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, which mandates child-sensitive peacekeeping and proactive steps to protect children in armed conflict. While the Economic Community of West African States has begun embedding child protection advisers into some of its interventions, SADC has not yet followed suit.

Mozambique itself is party to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocol prohibiting the recruitment and use of children in conflict. The country’s domestic legal framework, including the 2008 Law for the Promotion and Protection of Children’s Rights, seeks to shield children from exploitation. Civil society groups and international observers have repeatedly called on Maputo and regional actors to prioritise the prevention of child abductions and exploitation. Thus far, these calls have largely gone unanswered. 

For the few children who have escaped or been released from insurgent camps in Cabo Delgado, returning to their communities is often the beginning of a new ordeal. Victims are viewed with suspicion, seen both as potential threats and tainted by their association with armed groups. Girls, in particular, may be labelled unmarriageable, which only deepens their social marginalisation.

Despite Mozambique’s long history of post-conflict reintegration, particularly after its civil war, current efforts to support returning child abductees are minimal to non-existent. 

Numerous reports have cautioned that there are no strategies or organisations that prevent former insurgents from returning to violent groups, and that there do not appear to be any mechanisms in place to aid children. The 1996 Graça Machel Report, which catalysed UN Security Council Resolution 1612 on children and armed conflict, warned of these exact patterns, where post-conflict failure to support child returnees undermines both justice and peacebuilding. 

Statements from international organisations often describe child abductions in conflict zones as tragic reminders of the broader dangers faced by vulnerable communities. While this is by no means untrue, framing incidents of child abduction as unfortunate collateral damage risks obscuring a harsher reality. That is, that in Cabo Delgado and across several African conflict theatres, children are deliberately being targeted to serve military, ideological and psychological objectives. For too long, conflict responses have prioritised kinetic solutions while sidelining child protection as a peripheral issue. There is both a legal obligation and a moral imperative to embed child protection into the heart of counterinsurgency and peacebuilding frameworks. In Mozambique and beyond, protecting children must be treated not as a symbolic gesture, but as a strategic necessity.

Erika van der Merwe is a research intern at Good Governance Africa doing her MPhil at the University of Cape Town.