Mozambique: Staff working on TotalEnergies’ LNG project allegedly coerced women into sex; unpublished report reveals; incl…Co comments
‘Unpublished UN Report Implicates Workers on TotalEnergies-led Project in Sexual Exploitation and Mozambique's Military in Sexual Violence’ 18 June 2026
In 2019, the French energy giant TotalEnergies began operations on an extraction project in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique’s northernmost province and one of the country’s poorest regions. There, TotalEnergies established Mozambique liquefied natural gas (LNG), one of the world’s largest LNG projects, with investments totaling over 20 billion dollars. By then, residents had already endured two years of violence at the hands of an Islamic State-affiliated, local Islamist insurgency known as Al-Shabaab. The conflict has claimed over 6,000 lives and displaced over 1.3 million people. Now, previously unpublished documents and interviews reveal women and girls have borne the heaviest burden, facing sexual violence from all sides, including by some of the Mozambican soldiers initially deployed to protect them and by some employees working for the TotalEnergies’ led Mozambique LNG project.
…These testimonies were assembled into a previously unpublished report, titled “Voices of Mozambique,” which sought to document gender-based violence (GBV) in the region. The accounts were gathered across the districts of Mueda, Nangade, Muidumbe, Palma, Mocímboa da Praia, Macomia, and Mecufi, through interviews with more than 100 people, including survivors from displaced, host, and returnee communities, as well as local figures and GBV specialists. The latter included national authorities, religious leaders, academics, and national and international protection and humanitarian actors. Overwhelmingly, the report exposes sexual violence committed by Mozambique’s armed forces and Al-Shabaab against the women and children of Cabo Delgado. The report also documents the coercion of sex workers by staff associated with TotalEnergies’ LNG project. Throughout the report, all but one reference to TotalEnergies was replaced with the term “multinational energy company.”
A TotalEnergies spokesperson said that Mozambique LNG “is not aware of such allegations but takes them very seriously.” The project, the spokesperson said, has a mechanism in which people affected by the company’s operations can formally submit concerns. “We have reviewed the grievances lodged in the project grievance mechanism and have no such report,” the spokesperson said. Asked why the report was never made public, a UN spokesperson said that “operational dynamics and insecurity at the time made it impossible to bring this report up to the standards needed for publication,” adding that the 100-page document had been “used internally to inform programme development.”