ABSTRACT
Mozambique offers a case in which negotiated peace led to a successful peace settlement that endured without a return to armed hostilities for 21 years. From 1977 to 1992, Mozambique was embroiled in an internal war that cost an estimated 1 million lives, displaced about 2 million people, ravaged the economy, and left the countryside dotted with more than 480,000 landmines. Two years after a negotiated peace settlement was signed in 1992, the country held its first-ever multiparty elections and began a process of economic recovery that soon placed it among the continent’s fastest-growing non-oil economies. In the second post-war decade, Mozambique emerged as a site of prodigious reserves of natural resources, most importantly natural gas and coal. The country has held five consecutive general elections, as well as four consecutive municipal elections and, most recently, elections for provincial assemblies. Yet after more than 20 years of stability and strong and steady economic growth, Mozambique currently finds itself in a period of uncertainty, with past political progress and current economic opportunities threatened by unresolved tensions on both fronts.
