Kenyan officials meet Haiti police ahead of deployment mission after gangs threat
3 min read
A team of Kenyan officials is in Haiti to explore how best to help the troubled country fight rampant gang violence
A team of Kenyan officials is in Haiti to explore how best to help the troubled country fight rampant gang violence.
A Kenyan delegation met with leaders of Haiti’s national police on Monday, a day after arriving in the country as it assesses leading a possible United Nations-backed multinational security force to help police fight escalating gang warfare.
The force is meant to assist Haiti’s understaffed and under-resourced police department, with only about 10,000 officers for the nation’s more than 11 million people.
“We are here to assess the needs of Haiti’s national police, better understand the situation and do our best to help the Haitian people,” Kenyan ambassador and head of bilateral and political affairs, George Orina, said in a Haitian government statement.
The 10-person Kenyan delegation met senior police staff early on Monday, the statement said and will stay until Wednesday, holding further meetings with national police and Haiti’s Prime Minister, Ariel Henry.
Henry’s government first requested international security assistance last October, but despite repeated calls from the United Nations, the call went unanswered until Kenya said it was prepared to lead such a force last month.
According to reports, the Kenyan officials, who were at the police headquarters in Port-au-Prince on Monday, had met with police chief Frantz Elbe.
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Before arriving in Haiti on Sunday, the Kenyan delegation met with countries and groups in New York that are trying to decide how best to help Haiti.
The meeting come amid threats by gangs in Haiti to fight back should the deployed officers commit human rights abuses during their mission.
“We will fight against them until our last breath. It will be a fight of the Haitian people to save the dignity of our country,” Jimmy Barbecue” Cherizier, the leader of the G9 Family and Allies gang alliance, stated, according to Al Jazeera.
From January 1 until Aug. 15, more than 2,400 people in Haiti were reported killed, more than 950 kidnapped and another 902 injured, according to the most recent U.N. statistics.
Gangs are now estimated to control up to 80% of the capital of Port-au-Prince, with more than 200,000 people displaced after gangs pillaged and burned their homes.
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