The UN security council has voted to send a Kenyan-led multinational security force to Haiti to help its government combat violent gangs, which have driven the Caribbean country into anarchy.
A US resolution to approve the force, six years since the closure of a previous UN stabilisation mission, drew 13 votes in favour with Russia and China abstaining.
The multinational security support mission has been authorised for a year, to be reviewed after nine months. Kenya’s foreign affairs minister, Alfred Mutua, said in a BBC interview that Kenyan troops should be in Haiti by the end of the year.
Jamaica, the Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda have also offered to send officers for the force, whose size has yet to be determined. The US has offered logistic support and $100m in financing.
The UN will face a serious challenge and many doubts over the ability of an outside force with its own record of abuses to combat the Haitian gangs. The country’s prime minister, Ariel Henry, and his government called for help from a foreign force nearly a year ago, as gangs took over more and more of the country, driving a surge in homicides, rapes and kidnappings, which have contributed to dire poverty and severe hunger.
So far this year, more than 2,400 Haitians have been reported killed, more than 950 kidnapped and another 902 injured, according to UN statistics. Last month, the most powerful gang boss, Jimmy Chérizier, a formed police officer known as “Barbecue”, called for an armed uprising to oust Henry.
The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the UN vote “marks an important milestone in bringing much-needed help to the people of Haiti who have suffered for far too long at the hands of violent criminals”.
“The global community owes a debt of gratitude to Kenya for answering Haiti’s call to serve as the lead nation of the mission, and likewise to the other nations that have pledged to join this mission,” Sullivan said. “It is now crucial that we focus on making progress in mobilizing the international support necessary to deploy this mission swiftly, effectively and safely.”
Haitian NGOs and aid groups have given the vote a tentative welcome, aware of the record of international intervention in Haiti. The previous UN mission was tarnished by sexual misconduct allegations involving more than 100 UN peacekeepers, including sexual abuse of minors. Sewage from a UN camp was implicated in a cholera outbreak which killed nearly 10,000 people.
“It remains to be seen if these police forces will be ordinary police officers or members of special units who are really trained to deal with this very particular kind of security threat,” said Diego Da Rin, a Latin America and Caribbean consultant at the International Crisis Group and expert on security in Haiti.
“These gangs have strongholds in very densely populated slums and they know the turf in which they operate even better than Haitian security officers. You have slums, with houses made of cement or corrugated iron sheets constructed in a very random way, without any urban planning, and very often you can only move around the houses in tiny little corridors that are less than a meter wide.”
“While international intervention should always be a last resort, the worsening humanitarian and health crisis demands action,” the director of policy and advocacy at the Project Hope aid agency, Jed Meline, said. “This intervention’s success depends on active Haitian involvement. Haiti has a mixed history of international interventions and this multinational action should take a supportive role, allowing Haitians to lead meaningful change in their country.”
Kenyan leaders have pointed to the country’s long history in peacekeeping, including military interventions in Somalia against threats from the al-Shabaab extremist group. But observers have warned the English- and Swahili-speaking police may be at a disadvantage or face greater risk in French- and Creole-speaking Haiti.
The offensive has also raised concerns over whether the officers are equipped to handle sophisticated armed criminal gangs, and over the Kenya police’s own history of brutality. Missing Voices, a campaign group that tracks extrajudicial killings in Kenya, estimates that there have been 1,350 deaths at the hands of police since it began collecting data in 2017.
“These are the real concerns around the deployment,” said Irũngũ Houghton, executive director of Amnesty International Kenya. “It is extremely important that there are clear rules of engagement and oversight – mandatory and enforceable parameters that prevent excessive use of force, particularly lethal force, corruption and sexual exploitation.”