Kenya’s Ruto lands in Haiti to assess police mission as insecurity deepens

Kenya-led police mission to Haiti’s mandate expires next month as country continues to reel from widespread violence.

Kenyan President William Ruto has landed in the Haitian capital to assess a Kenya-led security mission in the Caribbean nation, a day after a United Nations expert warned that Haiti faced deepening violence and insecurity.

In a statement on Saturday, a spokesperson for Ruto said the Kenyan leader would “visit and commend the Kenyan contingent working alongside their Haitian counterparts”.

Ruto also planned to meet with Haiti’s transitional presidential council and other officials, Hussein Mohamed said in a social media post.

The visit to Port-au-Prince comes about three months after the first Kenyan officers arrived in Haiti as part of a UN-backed, multinational mission aimed at tackling a surge in gang violence.

Haiti has reeled from years of violence as armed groups – often with ties to the country’s political and business leaders – have vied for influence and control of territory.

An uptick in attacks across Port-au-Prince at the end of February prompted the resignation of Haiti’s unelected prime minister, the creation of the transitional presidential council and the deployment of the Kenyan police deployment.

President @WilliamsRuto arrives in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 100 days after flagging off the Kenyan police contingent of the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) to Haiti.

The President is in Haiti to assess the progress of the MSS mission, visit and commend the Kenyan…

— Hussein Mohamed, MBS. (@HusseinMohamedg) September 21, 2024

Yet despite the presence of Kenyan and other foreign police officers in the country, insecurity remains rampant, with armed groups believed to still control about 80 percent of Port-au-Prince.

As of August, more than 578,000 Haitians had been internally displaced, largely due to the violence, according to data (PDF) from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Displaced families have been forced to live in squalid conditions as they wait to safely return to their homes.

On Friday, William O’Neill, a UN human rights expert on Haiti, said the country faced a dire humanitarian crisis as the armed groups continued to exert influence and carry out attacks.

He said the UN-backed mission – formally known as the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) – had so far deployed less than a quarter of its planned force. The mission’s mandate expires early next month.

“The equipment it has received is inadequate, and its resources are insufficient,” O’Neill said at the end of a visit to the country.

For its part, the Haitian National Police continues to lack “logistical and technical capacity to counter the gangs”, he said.

“This enduring agony must stop. It is a race against time,” O’Neill said of the situation.

It remains unclear what will happen when the UN-backed mission’s mandate expires in early October.

The United States, the deployment’s key backer, has been pushing to get more funding and personnel to bolster the force.

“The United States has been actively working to secure this additional support,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who visited Port-au-Prince in early September, recently said.

Blinken added that he plans to convene a meeting at the UN General Assembly this month “to encourage greater contributions to help meet Haiti’s security needs, its economic needs, its humanitarian needs, as well as to renew the mission’s mandate”.

Citing unnamed sources, The Miami Herald reported on September 4 that Washington was exploring the possibility of transitioning the mission into a UN peacekeeping operation.

“In coordination with partners, the United States is exploring options to bolster the Multinational Security Support mission and ensure the support that the MSS is providing Haitians is sustained long-term and ultimately paves the way to security conditions permitting free and fair elections,” a national security official told the US newspaper.

Many Haitians remain wary of UN interventions, however, saying past deployments have brought more harm than good. A deadly 2010 cholera outbreak was linked to a UN peacekeeping base, for example, while past UN forces have been accused of sexual abuse.

The UN-backed security mission also ran into numerous delays and met initial criticism.

But Haitian civil society groups have said help is needed to stem the violence.

They have added that a security deployment alone cannot solve systemic problems in the country, and urged safeguards to be put in place to prevent possible abuses by the international police force.