Africa-Press – Mozambique. The National Commission for Human Rights (CNDH) of Mozambique on Thursday called for the creation of a code of conduct for the respect of human rights in the north of the country because of the arrival of foreign troops to fight armed groups.
“We think it is important that a code of conduct is drawn up for these [foreign] forces concerning women and girls from the communities where they will be”, said Luís Bitone, president of the CNDH.
He was speaking during a round-table, organised jointly with the Institute for Multi-Party Democracy (IMD), on “The foreign military presence: Risks and Challenges in Protecting Human Rights and the Democratic Space in Cabo Delgado”.
The CNDH also defended a “severe accountability” in cases of “inappropriate relationship” between foreign soldiers and women or girls from the communities of that province in Northern Mozambique.
“We are talking about a force that is mostly made up of men and that in the communities can cause problems of harassment and sexual violations if there is no vigilance,” said the president of the CNDH.
The commission said the poor command of the “demographic and physical geography” would be a challenge for foreign soldiers, considering the presence of Mozambican forces as fundamental in the operations.
“If there is no special attention on this, there will be problems of confusing the enemy’s military bases with population clusters,” Bitone warned.
The mandate for a “joint force on standby” from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to support Mozambique in the fight against terrorism in Cabo Delgado was approved on 23 June at an extraordinary summit of the organisation in Maputo that discussed armed violence in that province, with military personnel from some member countries already on the ground.
The number of troops that the organisation will send to Mozambique is not publicly known, but SADC experts who were in Cabo Delgado had said in April that the mission would be made up of around 3,000 soldiers.
In Cabo Delgado, a province near the border with Tanzania, there is already a contingent of 1,000 soldiers and police from Rwanda (which is not part of SADC) to fight against armed groups as part of a bilateral agreement between the Mozambican government and the Kigali authorities.
Armed groups have terrorised Cabo Delgado province since 2017, with some attacks being claimed by the Islamic State group.
There are more than 3,100 deaths, according to the ACLED conflict registration project, and more than 817,000 displaced people, according to Mozambican authorities.
