Fags

Recent reported surveys have found that the “expected taboo of homosexuality in Mozambique has vanished”, especially in the younger generation.  Moreover, homosexuality is portrayed in a very positive light in the Mozambique press.  See www.afrol.com.  Mozambique is geographically situated right next to South Africa, where same-sex marriage was legalized a few years back. 

To get a flavor of what is happening on this topic, please read the following published report from 2008:

26 Feb 2008 -Maputo, Mozambique - An African lesbian group on Tuesday called on governments in the largely conservative continent to stop treating homosexuals like criminals.

The Coalition of African Lesbians is holding a conference attended by about 100 people in Mozambique to highlight discrimination against lesbians.

"Our main goal is that lesbian and homosexuality can no longer be seen as a criminal offence," the group's director and conference spokeswoman, Fikile Vilakazi, told Reuters.

"You should not be arrested and charged for how you use your own body."

African gay activists accuse authorities in many countries of "state-sponsored" homophobia and tacitly condoning their persecution. In some cases, possible sentences against gays include death by stoning.

Many traditional African societies view homosexuality as abhorrent. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has called gays "worse than dogs and pigs" and his government has banned local gay campaigners from displaying literature at local book fairs.

Thirty-eight of the 85 U.N. members that outlaw homosexuality are in Africa, according to an April 2007 International Lesbian and Gay Association report.

South Africa has adopted a liberal attitude and in 2006 became the first African nation to allow gay marriages, but campaigners said there were problems there too.

"People are facing detention and arrest, three lesbians were brutally murdered in South Africa and several others in Sierra Leone," said Vilakazi, a South African. "We want to get Africans to start talking openly about sexuality in their own way."

The conference, organised together with a gay organisation in Mozambique, will also discuss issues such as AIDS and violence against women.

Divorce

All available reports reveal that Mozambique has a relatively low divorce rate. 

Abortion

The state of affairs on this subject matter is revealed in the following piece from the publication Bio-Medicine:
Mozambique is set to end its blanket ban on abortion after the government acknowledged that current legislation was endangering the lives of women in one of Africa's most impoverished nations.

The proposed shake-up follows the release of a report by the health ministry which said around 100 pregnant women were dying every year after seeing backstreet abortionists while many more suffered "serious after-effects."  Abortion was first outlawed in the former Portuguese colony in legislation dating back to 1886, a ban reaffirmed in a 1981 law six years after the southeastern African country gained independence.

However Justice Minister Esperanca Machavela has confirmed that a review is being drawn up and is likely to be presented to parliament after it reconvenes in October.

With the ruling Frelimo party enjoying a majority in parliament, government legislation can be expected to pass comfortably.

The announcement has sparked emotions -- in a country where Catholicism is the most widely followed religion, practiced by about a third of the population, but where women's groups are calling for change.

"You're asking me if I am for or against the decriminalisation of abortion? My response is yes -- a thousand times over," says Laurinda Chirindza whose 15-year-old daughter died last year.

"My daughter fell pregnant to someone who was barely older than her," said the tearful 43-year-old.

"When I discovered what had happened, I immediately decided that she should have an abortion.

I didn't want her to have the same life as me.

"I also fell pregnant when I was very young, when I was 14, and I had to abandon my studies." "My friends told me about a nurse who could do the procedure at her own home.

After agreeing on the price, 650 meticas (22 euros/30 dollars), we returned two days later." The teenager took the abortion drugs supplied by the nurse, but she soon began vomiting and violently shaking. 
"As her situation got worse, I insisted that she be taken to the A and E (accident and emergency) at the central hospital. 

“We then had trouble finding a car, and when we finally arrived, the doctors told us that it was too late. 

“My daughter died." According to the health ministry, 30 percent of women admitted to Maputo's main hospital following a backstreet abortion end up dead. 

Figures compiled by the UN's World Health Organisation show that some 68,000 women die annually due to unsafe abortions, most in developing countries such as Mozambique -- which is still reeling from a devastating 1976-1992 civil war that claimed up to one million lives. 

Mozambique is currently filled with abortion clinics and easy access to “pills” that will kill your unborn baby.

Ecclesiastes 12:13  Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
14  For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

Sexual trafficking (report from http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2008/105386.htm)

Mozambique is a source and, to a much lesser extent, a destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. The use of forced and bonded child laborers is a common practice in Mozambique’s rural areas, often with the complicity of family members. Women and girls are trafficked from rural to urban areas of Mozambique, as well as to South Africa, for domestic servitude and commercial sexual exploitation in brothels; young men and boys are trafficked to South Africa for farm work and mining. Trafficked Mozambicans often labor for months in South Africa without pay before employers have them arrested and deported as illegal immigrants. Traffickers are typically part of small networks of Mozambican or South African citizens; however, involvement of larger Chinese and Nigerian syndicates has been reported. Small numbers of Mozambican children and adults are reportedly trafficked to Zambia for agricultural labor. Zimbabwean women and girls are trafficked to Mozambique for sexual exploitation and domestic servitude.