Revealed: Unpublished UN Report Implicates Workers on TotalEnergies-led Project in Sexual Exploitation and Mozambique’s Military in Sexual Violence

Mozambique Exposed

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Mozambican soldiers have been accused of rape and sexual violence against women and girls in Cabo Delgado, while staff working on TotalEnergies’ LNG project allegedly coerced women into sex, according to interviews and an unpublished UN report obtained by Forbidden Stories.

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Key findings

An unpublished UN report obtained by Forbidden Stories details allegations of human rights abuses committed by the Mozambican military in northern Mozambique

The same report alleges that  employees working for the TotalEnergies’ LNG project perpetrated sexual exploitation against local residents and coerced sex workers; the consortium’s reporting found subcontractors are also implicated in such abuses

Warning: This article contains explicit descriptions of rape, sexual abuse, and child abuse

By Mariana Abreu

June 18th, 2026

Additional reporting by Costanza Gambarini and Luke Barratt (SourceMaterial), Gaëlle Laleix (RFI), Jörg Brase (ZDF).

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Now, previously unpublished documents and interviews reveal women and girls have borne the heaviest burden, facing sexual violence from all sides, including by some of the Mozambican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.

In red, Cabo Delgado Province (Credit: Profoss, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons).

In 2025, Tomazina*, a 25-year-old resident of Palma , a coastal town in Cabo Delgado that neighbours the Mozambique LNG project site, travelled to the TotalEnergies compound in the Afungi Peninsula, some 20 kilometers away . Tomazina, whose name has been changed for her protection, had heard about vacancies there and wanted to submit a job application.

“There were so many people,” she told Forbidden Stories. She was hopeful when the man in charge of collecting applications pulled her from the line and suggested she give him her phone number to discuss opportunities.

“He called me that afternoon,” Tomazina recalled. Then he said, ‘I’m going to help you get that job, but in exchange I also have a request. I’d like to have sex with you.’” A week later, their relationship became sexual. Tomazina soon contacted him to ask about the job, but he “stopped responding to my messages,” she said.

Between January and April 2024, a UN agency dedicated to s exual and r eproductive h ealth, collected testimonies that describe similar accounts, including how women and girls were allegedly coerced into sex by men linked to the Mozambique LNG project, in exchange for employment.

“They tell women and girls that if they sleep with them, they will give them a job. Girls accept, and men say, ‘The job will come soon,’ but sometimes, it does not even come,” a resident told the UN agency.

Anonymous interviewee speaking to the consortium (Credit: Source Material).

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.”

Extract from the UN report mentionning TotalEnergies (Credit: Forbidden Stories).

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…