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Cabo Delgado Insurgency and Displacement, Mozambique

2017–2026 · Sub-Saharan Africa

Displacement Mass Killing

Displaced

1 million

UNHCR states that displacement exceeded one million people at the peak of the conflict in 2021–22 and that over 582,000 were still displaced in northern Mozambique as of January 2024, with about 632,400 having returned since the military intervention of July 2021. ACAPS counted approximately 834,300 internally displaced and 420,200 returnees across the three affected provinces as of April 2023. The figures come from IOM's Displacement Tracking Matrix and UNHCR operational monitoring; ACAPS notes that reported numbers fluctuate between sources and that data is limited by restricted access and press freedom.

Share of the population affected

43%

of the population of Cabo Delgado province at the 2017 Mozambican census, taken as the insurgency began, 2017

Killed

at least 2,000

Documented minimum; the full toll is higher. direct killing

As of 2026. IOM's Displacement Tracking Matrix and OCHA continue to revise northern Mozambique displacement figures through 2026 as returns and new attacks alternate.

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What happened

Attacks by an Islamist insurgency began in Mocímboa da Praia in October 2017 and escalated into a war across northern Cabo Delgado, a province where major offshore gas projects were under development. Insurgents seized towns, burned villages and beheaded civilians; government forces and, from 2021, Rwandan and SADC contingents pushed them back from the main towns without ending the insurgency. ACAPS recorded more than 2,000 fatalities, mostly civilians, and over one million people displaced as of April 2023, counting both those still displaced and those who had returned. UNHCR reports displacement exceeding one million at the 2021–22 peak, with more than 582,000 still displaced in January 2024 and around 632,400 returns since July 2021. Renewed attacks in 2024 and 2025 displaced further waves. Access restrictions, limited press freedom and government reluctance to acknowledge the conflict's severity have left the data incomplete.

Parties

An Islamist insurgency known locally as al-Shabaab and claimed by the Islamic State has attacked towns and villages in northern Mozambique, and government forces and Rwandan and SADC troops have fought it, emptying much of Cabo Delgado province

Disputed

The insurgency's relationship to the Islamic State and the weight of local grievances over land, exclusion and the gas industry as against transnational jihadism are debated among analysts; the Mozambican government has been criticized for understating the conflict's scale.

The denominator

Mozambique's National Statistics Institute counted 2,333,278 in Cabo Delgado in the census of August 2017, the month before the first attack at Mocimboa da Praia. Displacement recorded by IOM's Displacement Tracking Matrix rose to about 946,000 in northern Mozambique by early 2022, the peak, then fell with large-scale returns before renewed attacks in Chiure, Ancuabe and Macomia drove fresh waves from 2024 onwards; the cumulative figure of about a million counts people displaced at least once.

Displacement in Cabo Delgado is highly cyclical: large numbers have returned home and been displaced again, so a cumulative total counts the same people more than once and a point-in-time total is much lower than a million.

Where the baseline comes from

Mozambique — Displacement Tracking Matrix, IOMofficial
Insurgency in Cabo Delgado — Wikipediaopen-edited

On the death toll

ACAPS records more than 2,000 fatalities, mostly civilians, from violence since 2017; this is a floor drawn from event monitoring. Event datasets that include combatant deaths give substantially higher totals. ACAPS itself notes limited and fluctuating data because of restricted access and constrained reporting from the province, so no upper bound is established.

Documented forms of violence

Mass KillingDestruction of Property

Attacks on civilians and the burning of villages and towns are documented by ACAPS and UNHCR.