Irish-Qhobosheane, Jenni. 2021 ‘Counting the Cost of Firearm Violence.’ How to Silence the Guns? Southern Africa's Illegal Firearms Markets, pp. 5-7. Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, Geneva. 19 October

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In Mozambique, the number of illicit firearms in circulation has declined since the early 1990s. However, the country still has an estimated 1.337 million firearms in civilian hands. Of these, just 7 000 are legally registered, leaving more than 1.33 million unregistered guns in circulation. In 2014, it was reported that Mozambique's main opposition party, the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO), had arms caches in five districts within Sofala province alone (Maringué, Gorongosa, Nhamatanda, Buzi and Chibavava) that were alleged to have been large enough to fully arm
thousands of RENAMO fighters.

Although there is currently no information available to show the number of deaths resulting from gunshots in Mozambique, statistics published by the legal medicine department of Maputo Central Hospital in 2003 showed that firearm-related injuries were the second most frequent external cause of death (8.8 per cent) in that hospital between 1994 and 2003. A survey of Chimoio residents conducted in 2003 also showed that while most respondents believed the availability of firearms had decreased, it appeared that the number of automatic weapons in circulation had increased, outnumbering the number of handguns in the community.

A 2008 situational analysis into Mozambique's weapons risk mitigation conducted by the UN Development Programme found that the proliferation of illicit small arms in Mozambique, especially in the main urban centres, had become one of the main causes of insecurity for citizens and their assets. Two years later, in 2010, the Mozambican attorney general said the illegal possession of firearms had become one of the major causes of crime in the country.23 More
recently, interviews conducted as part of this research suggest that armed robbers, drug dealers, poachers, hijackers, kidnappers and insurgents in the country are all able to access firearms with relative ease.

A recent development in Mozambique – the emergence in 2017 of what is believed to be an ISIS-linked insurgency in the northern Cabo Delgado province – has further compounded the problem of illicit firearms in Mozambique, resulting in a renewed proliferation of weapons in the area.

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