The announcement was made on Monday in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa by the country´s minister of foreign affairs and cooperation, José Pacheco on the sidelines of the 32nd Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Union African (UA).
The summit is running under the theme, “2019: Year of Refugees, Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons: Towards Durable Solutions for Forced Displacement in Africa”.
The choice of motto, said Pacheco, is due to the very large migratory flow in Africa.
In view of this situation, the minister said that “African states need to deal with these issues in a consensual way under pain of non-harmonized treatments that can provoke an uncontrolled migration situation on the continent.”
Pacheco added that Mozambique also has a long history of refugees, when several of its citizens decided to establish foreign residence in several neighboring countries, such as Tanzania and Zambia, as well as in other countries of the region and the world during the national liberation struggle.
Therefore, after independence in 1975, the Mozambican government decided to adopt a policy of solidarity with foreign citizens who, for reasons of force majeure, political or military, decided to immigrate to Mozambique.
“Therefore, Mozambique is in solidarity and signatory of all agreements in favor of migration,” he said.
He said that the city of Nampula, the capital of the province with the same name, has the Marratane Refugee Center that welcomes citizens who have chosen Mozambique as a country of residence while waiting for the situation to improve in their respective countries of origin.
He said that Mozambique is located in the southern region of Africa that does not have alarming proportions of refugees, compared to the central and northern regions of Africa, where migration phenomenon has very large and complex proportions.
Thus, “we will continue to be in solidarity and deal with the issue as an important and fundamental issue for the security of the continent and for the economic development of Mozambique and the continent as a whole.”
Available data from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) statistics indicate that sub-Saharan Africa has more than 26 percent of the 25.4 million refugees worldwide.
According to the U.N. refugee agency, Wars, persecution and other violence drove a record 68.5 million people from their homes in 2017 worldwide, the majority uprooted inside their own countries while 25 million were refugees,
CM/APA