The armed conflict in Northern Mozambique has triggered a severe child rights crisis, leaving 441,721 children and 5,365 teachers in urgent need of humanitarian education support, with 138 schools closed and 82,800 children having their learning interrupted. Despite the critical scale of this emergency, humanitarian education funding has alarmingly declined over the past four years, dropping from 37.5% coverage in 2022 to just 5.1% in 2025, marking the lowest funding level across all humanitarian clusters. Save the Children, alongside its allies, is therefore demanding urgent action from donors, UN agencies, and government stakeholders to demonstrate their duty of care and commitment to reverse this situation, protect the right of conflict-affected children to safe and uninterrupted learning, and prevent long-term, intergenerational impacts resulting from a lack of education.
Do you know that 441,721 children are in need of humanitarian education support; 5,365 teachers are in need of humanitarian support; 138 schools are closed due to conflict; and 82,800 children had their education interrupted, in the armed conflict affected areas of the Northern Mozambique?
In contrary to the level of the crisis and the critical needs on the ground, humanitarian education funding in Mozambique has shown a deeply concerning pattern of declination over the last four years. In 2022, only 37.5% of requirements were met; in 2023, 30.4%; in 2024, just 9.3%; and in 2025, only 5.1% so far, the lowest coverage across all clusters.
Therefore, Save the Children calls for an urgent action from the donors, UN agencies, stakeholders, philanthropists, private sectors, the provincial and the national governments to demonstrate their duty of care and responsibility to reverse and improve the situation of out of school children in the conflict affected areas of the country – aimed to ensure safe learning continuity, promote protective environments, and address long-standing vulnerabilities exacerbated by armed conflict.
Ilaria Manunza, Country Director, Save the Children International Mozambique, says “we do appreciate and recognize the political will and interest that led the government of Mozambique to endorse the Safe School Declaration (SSD) in May 2015, and thereby call upon the government, including but not limited to the Ministry of Education and Culture, Ministry of Defence, to urgently demonstrate a renewed political will and commitment to protect, respect and fulfil the rights of conflict affected children to universal basic education, safe and uninterrupted learning preventing long-term, intergenerational impacts of lack of education.”
Overall, this is a child rights crisis – a problem of the present and of the future. Without an urgent, well-funded, and coordinated humanitarian and development intervention, the consequences may reverberate for generations.
"After the attacks, returning to school was difficult. At first, we were afraid the attacks would happen again and that armed groups would use the school as a passageway." 15-year-old student, Chiúre.
