Hundreds of officers traveled to Haiti to begin a UN-backed mission to reduce the influence of the country’s gangs.
A group of Kenyan police officers has arrived in Haiti, marking the start of a United Nations-backed mission to combat powerful armed gangs that have caused turmoil in the Caribbean country.
Waving Kenyan flags and sporting camouflage uniforms and rifles, several hundred Kenyan police officers stepped onto the tarmac at Toussaint Louverture International Airport on Tuesday, near the capital Port-au-Prince. More than 80% of the city has fallen under gang control.
“I commend – and am deeply grateful to – all of the countries that have pledged personnel and financial support for this mission,” US President Joe Biden said in a statement on Tuesday, noting that the US has also provided $360 million in support.
Although the UN has urged the international community to send a security force to Haiti, a long and controversial history of foreign interventions has caused critics to question the initiative.
These doubts were compounded by the lack of concrete details about the objectives and actions of the latest mission.
“What’s going to happen in terms of gangs?” said Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, senior specialist at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. “Is it a static mission? Is it a moving mission? All these details are still missing and I think it’s time for there to be real transparency.”
Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille, however, praised the effort in comments Tuesday.
“The country is going through very difficult times,” he said. “We are going to start working little by little to take back the country.”
Conille was appointed to the role last month as part of a transitional government in Haiti. The country has not held federal elections since before the assassination of President Jovenal Moise in 2021.
Speaking alongside Conille was Monica Juma, security adviser to Kenyan President William Ruto. Juma said in comments that the forces will serve as “agents of peace, of stability, of hope.”
However, on the day that Kenyan forces arrived in Haiti, police in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, opened fire on protesters trying to storm parliament, killing several protesters and injuring dozens of others.
“The police should be able to operate well in their own country, but they can’t,” said Enock Alumasi Makanga, a former Kenyan police officer who now works in private security. “How do you think they will be able to deal with this when they get to Haiti?”
Responding to questions about the incident, Biden administration spokesman Matthew Miller said the US and other countries “vetted Kenyan personnel” in Haiti and stressed the importance of human rights.
The Kenyan police are the first contingent of an international force in Haiti that is expected to include around 2,500 police officers from 15 other countries.
A previous UN mission, which lasted from 2004 to 2017, did little to improve conditions on the island. Instead, his presence was tarnished by allegations of sexual assault and the start of a cholera outbreak that killed an estimated 10,000 people.
In the following years, however, the gangs increased their influence, filling the power vacuum left by the Haitian government. So far this year, violence has displaced a record 578,074 people from their homes and nearly half the country’s population lives with severe hunger.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
