Almost 80,000 people in Mozambique were forced to leave their homes due to violence in 2021, a sharp reduction from 530,000 the previous year, reveals a report by the UN refugee agency.

According to the report "Global Trends: Forced Displacement," released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of people forced to leave their homes due to wars, violence, and human rights violations has grown every year for the past decade, and by the end of 2021, it reached a record 89.3 million, 8% more than in 2020 and more than twice as many as 10 years ago.

Of these, 53.2 million are displaced in their own countries, 27.1 million are refugees, that is, they are displaced outside their country and have refugee status, and 4.6 million are asylum seekers.

The document, which is also cited by several media outlets, states that sub-Saharan Africa hosts more than a quarter of all people forcibly displaced in a country other than their own and more than three-quarters of all new IDPs in 2021.

Mozambique, which, according to the previous report, had registered 530,000 new IDPs by 2020, mostly due to the conflict in Cabo Delgado in the north of the country, registered last year 76,900 cases of forced internal displacement (15% of the number registered the previous year).

Cabo Delgado province has been the target of terrorist attacks since 2017 with some attacks being claimed by the extremist group Islamic State.

According to the International Organization for Migration, another UN agency, there are currently a total of 784,000 internally displaced persons due to the conflict, which has claimed some 4,000 lives, according to the ACLED conflict registration project.

The reception centers in Metuge, Cabo Delgado, which receive citizens displaced due to terrorism, are registering an increase in entries due to the new attacks by terrorists.

Since July 2021, an offensive by government troops with Rwandan support, later joined by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), has allowed areas where there was an insurgent presence to recover, but the flight of the insurgents has provoked new attacks in other districts used as passage or temporary refuge.