*Names have been changed for security reasons
Chiure, Mozambique – Sitting in front of their mudbrick home in Chiure – a town in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province – Ismael* and Estebao* stare at the ground, lost in a memory that still haunts them.
Both boys – brothers aged 13 and 10 – were abducted in November by members of the ISIL affiliate in Mozambique (ISM), known locally as al‑Shabab, though it has no links to the Somali armed group with the same name.
“We were playing – it was five in the afternoon – when a group of armed men entered the village and captured all of us,” Ismael whispers, speaking in Portuguese through a translator.
Beside him, Estebao listens to his brother’s account in silence, a distant, vacant look in his eyes.
The boys were taken with four others from the community. It was just one incident in a wave of child abductions by armed fighters that rights groups say has become widespread in the region.
Such abductions have “ramped up” recently, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a June report, noting that national civil society groups and the United Nations children’s agency (UNICEF) also report kidnappings are on the rise.
“In recent days, 120 or more children have been abducted,” Abudo Gafuro, director at Kwendeleya, a national organisation that monitors attacks and provides support to victims, told HRW in June.
Some observers say the statistics do not include all abduction cases, and that even those that are recorded receive little international attention.
This, as the conflict continues to displace thousands in one of the world’s poorest yet most resource-rich regions, flush with LNG, minerals, and precious stones.