New data shows that Mozambique falls short across almost all human rights indicators

 

PRESS RELEASE

New data shows that Mozambique falls short across almost all human rights indicators

 

New data released today by independent NGO, the Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI), show that Mozambique is trailing far behind in almost all its’ human rights commitments.

Mozambique's very low Safety from the State score of 2.1 out of 10 suggests that many people are not safe from one or more of the following: arbitrary arrest, torture and ill-treatment, forced disappearance, execution, or extrajudicial killing. Furthermore, not only do all of Mozambique’s Safety from the State scores fall within HRMI’s ‘very bad’ range, but it is ranked the lowest globally out of all countries sampled, tying with Kenya, China, and Bangladesh.

A screenshot of a graph AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Figure 1: Mozambique's Safety from the State scores from 2017 – 2024

As shown in the trends above, Mozambique has suffered from a sharp decline in its performance on civil and political rights over recent years, highlighting the backsliding of the government.

Furthermore, Mozambique's low Empowerment score of 3.4 out of 10 suggests that many people are not enjoying their civil liberties and political freedoms (freedom of speech, assembly and association, democratic rights, and religion and belief). Once again, the rights of all the above scores fall into HRMI’s ‘very bad’ range, with only freedom of religion and belief falling within the ‘fair’ range.

A screenshot of a graph AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Figure 2: Mozambique's Empowerment scores from 2017 - 2024

Human rights expert respondents in Mozambique noted that human rights advocates, people who protest or engage in non-violent political activity, people with particular political affiliations or beliefs, and academics are those who are particularly at risk of having their Empowerment and Safety from the State rights violated.

Mozambique’s scores for Quality of Life, which cover the right to education, food, health, housing, and work, show similarly bad results. Mozambique holds an overall score of 71%, falling into HRMI’s ‘very bad’ range, with the right to work scoring particularly low at just 22.6%. A comparison of the 155 countries sampled for the right to work shows that Mozambique is tied with Zambia for fourth lowest globally, slightly ahead of only Malawi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Madagascar.

‘Mozambique’s scores across all indicators raises [MA1] [EG2] serious concern,’ said HRMI Co-Executive Director, Melissa del Aguila. ‘We encourage government leaders[MA3]  to prioritise timely and impactful reforms to strengthen these outcomes in light of our findings[MA4] .’

ENDS

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About the Rights Tracker: The Rights Tracker is a global project to measure the human rights performance of countries systematically. The 2025 dataset launched today gives scores on nine civil and political rights for more than 40 countries from the years 2017 to 2024. Annual data on five economic and social rights for 203 countries (depending on the right) from 2000 to 2022, based on the award-winning SERF Index methodology, is also available. Please visit rightstracker.org for the freely available dataset. HRMI’s data are used by a wide range of people and organisations, including Amnesty International, the World Bank, and the United Nations.

 

About HRMI: The Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI) is an independent non-profit organisation part of a global movement building a world where all people can flourish. Since 2017, we have used a range of award-winning, peer-reviewed, robust methodologies to produce human rights data that are used by a wide range of people and organisations. All of our data is available for free on the Rights Tracker, which is a certified Digital Public Good. We believe that what gets measured gets improved. www.humanrightsmeasurement.org

 

HRMI’s 2025 data release is now live via this link: https://rightstracker.org/en


For media inquiries, please contact: Evelynne Gomez, Communications Lead, at evelynne.gomez@hrmi.ngo

 [MA1]Is it raise or raises? For some reason I'm leaning toward the former, but not sure. The scores (plural) raise?

 [EG2]it's raise, you're correct! :)

 [MA3]Maybe sub in government leaders or policymakers to it's clear who we mean?

 [MA4]..'in light of our findings'? Using 'these' twice so close together sounds a little weird to me but not sure if subbing in our helps. I'll go with whatever you think would be best.

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