Mozambique’s relief agency, the National Disaster Management Institute (INGD) has warned that humanitarian assistance in the northern province of Cabo Delgado is under pressure from the combination of terrorist raids and climatic shocks, which affect the same communities.

Speaking at a Saturday debate on Radio Mozambique, the INGC Cabo Delgado delegate, Marques Naba, said the humanitarian response must be adjusted to “a complex and simultaneous scenario’.

“In Cabo Delgado we are looking at two aspects’, he said. “The same community is the victim of the rainy season and of the conflict. This is the major challenge that all humanitarian actors are managing’.

Naba said that during the current rainy season, 4,570 houses were affected, of which 1,316 were totally destroyed. “We are talking about 3.629 households, covering 9,671 individuals’.

As for the impact of Islamist terrorism, Naba said that currently over 434,000 people were displaced in Cabo Delgado. But 678,000 people who had been formerly displaced, have been able to return to their home areas.

He stressed the INGD believes that assistance should go, not only to displaced people, but also to host communities “to avoid tensions within the communities’.

Faced with the reduction in foreign aid, the INGD is no longer accommodating displaced people in tents. “We are investing in building materials and in creating villages with basic services such as schools, markets and health units’, said Naba.

He stressed that it is the government and not NGOs which leads humanitarian coordination. “It is the government that leads humanitarian operations in Mozambique’, he said. “The partners complement the plans defined by the government’.

SourceP: ALLAfrica