"Here, in this area, there are many girls who were kidnapped and forced to marry terrorists," said 17-year-old Telma from the Chiure district in the northern Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado. A brutal war between an "Islamic State"-affiliated extremist group and Mozambican security forces and their allies has been raging in her home region since October 2017.

"In our neighborhood, there is a girl who managed to escape the terrorists after three years of captivity and return to her family," Telma said. "But most never come back. The jihadis also abduct very young girls. They grow up with the terrorists until they reach puberty. Then they are forced into sex and have to bear children."

Telma's account was one of the hundreds of testimonies collected and analyzed by aid workers in northern Mozambique and summarized in a recent report on "forced child marriages in Cabo Delgado.", published by Save The Children Mozambique. 

"The problem of forced marriages of underage girls already existed before the war, but it was long taboo. The background is cultural and social. Since the start of the terror, the problem has dramatically worsened. We have to do something about it," Paula Sengo Timane, one of the report's authors, told DW.

More child marriages

The escalation of the conflict in Cabo Delgado in 2023 has led to a 10% increase in child marriages, according to the NGOs involved in the study. Timane said she fears that this number could continue to rise. The war, raging in large parts of Cabo Delgado province, prevents children in contested areas from receiving the protection and support they need.

Timane called for a swift resolution to the conflict in Cabo Delgado and additional funds to provide care and support for children. Asked if it was possible for NGOs like Save the Children to continue providing aid in areas affected by terrorism, such as the districts of Macomia, Palma, or Mocímboa da Praia, she said, "It's not impossible, but very difficult and challenging."

As long as the security situation is precarious, aid organizations normally do not have access to the contested areas and the vulnerable children there. It is currently almost impossible to travel to the affected people and work in these areas.

'Abductions and rape are systematic'

"During our fieldwork, we found that the jihadists systematically use abductions, rapes, and forced marriages as a means of warfare," Timane said. The extremists' goal is to instill "fear and terror" in the population: "They want to demonstrate their power over the families and also gain psychological ground. This is an important component of warfare for such groups, also in other parts of the world."

However, the problem also has a component rooted in the social and socio-cultural situation currently prevailing in the war zone: "The economic and social situation is catastrophic. In this context, we have occasionally documented cases of parents who, preemptively, decided to marry off their underage daughters to members of the terrorists," said the author of the study on "Forced child marriages in Cabo Delgado."

"We were told that parents even offered their daughters to the terrorists on their own initiative. These parents were usually after the dowry, the bride price, which they desperately needed to feed their remaining family, especially since the war has drastically reduced most incomes in the war zone in recent years," Paula Sengo Timane said, citing local testimony.

In some cases, she added, the safety aspect was also significant for the affected parents: "Some parents wanted to hand over their daughters to a man who might protect the girls from rape and abduction by other terrorists."

Devastating impact of war

The wave of attacks in Cabo Delgado since January has led to the closure of almost all schools in the contested areas, making it impossible for more than 22,700 children to continue their education. Timane said young married girls have significantly lower chances of graduating from school. They are also at higher risk of physical and sexual violence and an increased risk of complications during pregnancy and childbirth.

The study published by Save the Children noted that more and more children in Cabo Delgado are expressing concerns about becoming victims of this type of violence themselves.

"We have documented that the children, especially the girls in the particularly contested areas, are sometimes severely traumatized and need psychological care," Timane said.

The war against Islamist extremism in Cabo Delgado is entering its eighth year with no end in sight. According to United Nations data from June, more than 189,000 people have been forced to leave their homes since the end of last year, marking the war's largest displacement since the conflict began. More than 4,000 people have been killed and 700,000 displaced since 2017, according to NGOs.