In Mozambique’s war-torn north, girls fleeing conflict face a second nightmare, including corruption, sexual exploitation and survival prostitution – inside displacement camps meant to protect them
Since 2017, the province of Cabo Delgado in northern Mozambique has been caught in a cycle of terror. Attacks by Islamist insurgents known locally as Al Shabab, have left thousands dead and driven entire communities from their homes. But as Milda Langa reports for Integrity Magazine, the horror does not end with escape. In the shelters where the displaced seek safety, girls and young women face systematic abuse, bribery and sexual exploitation by those meant to provide aid.
In these overcrowded reception centres, families must register with officials to access food aid. Yet, as revealed in earlier investigations conducted by the same publication, displaced people are routinely asked to pay illicit “fees” for registration, an impossible demand for those who have lost everything. A 2022 report cited by Langa in the article details how local officials and NGO staff turned relief work into a “lucrative business”. Trucks filled with supplies returned half full because families unable to pay bribes were simply left out. “Where does the food go?” the report asked.
Worse still, the system’s corruption has enabled predation, the article notes. Women and girls, some as young as 12, are coerced into sexual relationships with aid workers or local leaders in exchange for food or inclusion on distribution lists. At the 2025 Annual Social Cohesion Conference, the organisation Kwendeleya revealed that more than 100 girls had become pregnant “in exchange for food”. Most cases were traced to the districts of Nangade and Macomia, which are areas with high concentrations of internally displaced people.
Beyond the camps, in urban areas such as Pemba’s Galp neighbourhood, displacement has also forced children into survival sex work. Langa shares the testimonies of two girls: a 13-year-old from Macomia who earns 500 meticais/MZN (about £5/$7) a day to support her extended family of 15, and a 15-year-old from Nangade, supporting 22 relatives after fleeing her home. Both have lost access to education. “I don’t go to school,” one said. “You have to have money to pay, but I don’t.”
The corruption extends beyond sexual exploitation. In the past, displaced families received state-issued checks for 3,500 MZN, which they could exchange for food and goods but stores inflated prices for those using the vouchers. “If two litres of oil cost 280 MZN,” one source explained, “displaced people paid 380 MZN. That was the rule of the game.” With the voucher system gone, officials now exploit the scarcity of food aid more directly: some charge bribes, others demand sexual favours, while food trucks mysteriously return loaded with undistributed supplies.
The situation in Cabo Delgado thus reveals a deeper crisis of governance and accountability. The war has displaced hundreds of thousands, but the relief structures designed to house them have become sites of renewed trauma. In Langa’s words, these girls are living through “a double hell”. First as victims of conflict, and again as victims of the corruption and violence that thrive in its aftermath.
Original article (“O duplo inferno das raparigas deslocadas em Cabo Delgado”) by Milda Langa was published in Portuguese on the 4 March 2025.
It is available here.
Integrity Magazine is an independent, critical magazine, with exhaustive, well-founded analysis, based in Maputo, Mozambique.
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