From November 2015 until the start of a ceasefire in December 2016, Mozambique’s security forces and the armed group of the country’s largest opposition party, the Mozambican National Resistance, or Renamo, committed numerous abuses in Mozambique’s central provinces. This report documents enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, summary killings and destruction of private property allegedly committed by government forces, and political killings, attacks on public transport and looting of health clinics by alleged Renamo forces.

In the year since the ceasefire was declared, hostilities and conflict-related human rights abuses have mostly ceased. However, the government has not met its obligation under international human rights law to hold those responsible for serious abuses on both sides to account.

The report focuses on abuses in the provinces of Manica, Sofala, Tete and Zambezia. Human Rights Watch documented seven cases of enforced disappearance—the government’s arrest of an individual but refusal to provide information on their whereabouts—and heard credible reports of many more cases. The military also arbitrarily detained those it suspected of belonging to or supporting Renamo or its armed group and beat suspects in custody. The houses and property of those arrested were at times burned or destroyed. A number of Renamo officials and activists were killed or nearly killed by unidentified assailants.

In a written response to questions from Human Rights Watch, the office of the president of Mozambique, Filipe Jacinto Nyusi, denied that government security forces had committed any abuses and rejected allegations of enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, torture and property destruction.

Report by the Human Rights Watch