Struggle to fight Haiti gangs faces critical UN vote as U.S. seeks peacekeeping mission
A U.N. Security Council vote scheduled for Monday on the armed international mission trying to rescue Haiti from the grip of armed gangs is critical to the fate of the operation and for the troubled nation's fight for stability, a senior State Department official told the Miami Herald.
"Some countries cannot make contributions to this effort under their own constitution unless the Security Council authorizes it," the official said about the Multinational Security Support mission in Haiti, currently being led by Kenya.
The vote on the extension of the mission's mandate is also critical for tapping an $85.3 million U.N. trust fund.
The U.S. and Ecuador are asking the Security Council to extend the mandate for the armed mission for another year ahead of its Oct. 2 expiration date. The mission was first approved by the Security Council in October 2023 for a year, but Kenyan police did not begin deploying until late June.
Though it is supposed to have a force of as many as 2,500 people, the operation remains understaffed, underfunded and ill-equipped, with 382 Kenyan policemen and 25 security personnel from Jamaica and Belize.
The mission's money challenges have led Washington to push for it to be transformed into a formal U.N. peacekeeping operation, a move first reported by the Herald which has since been endorsed by the head of Haiti's Transitional Presidential Council and Kenya's president. Earlier this month, the U.S. floated a draft resolution asking for the one-year extension of the mission and for the Security Council to transition the operation into a U.N. peacekeeping force. As a U.N. operation, the global entity would pay for the mission, relieving the U.S. of the financial load.
As of the weekend, it was unclear if the peacekeeping language was still in the latest proposed resolution. Russia and China, which are permanent members of the Security Council, have veto power and have been critical of past U.N. interventions in Haiti.
"We need a resolution and we need to move this mission onto a more sustainable financial path that people can plan against," the U.S. official said.
He added that "many countries" with a relationship with either Russia or China said "they would push" for the nations' support on the U.S. request.
Crisis worsens
Haiti's former government first requested an armed international mission to help its beleaguered police force take on the gangs two years ago. At the time, the gangs had taken over a private port, preventing the distribution of fuel and exacerbating an already worsening humanitarian crisis.
Today, the crisis has worsened. Gangs have escalated the violence and have tightened their grip on the capital. The U.N.'s independent expert on human rights, William O'Neill, said the violence has led to more than 700,000 having to flee their homes.
"Efforts must be redoubled immediately," O'Neil said last week as he concluded a visit to Haiti on the same day that Kenyan President William Ruto arrived in Port-au-Prince to check on the progress of his troops before heading to the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York.
The U.N. Human Rights Office said Friday that Haitians continue to experience "extremely serious" human rights violations and abuses, including gang executions, mutilations and rapes.
The latest U.N report, which covers the period up to June, noted that between March and June, at least 22 public institutions and 16 police stations and substations were attacked, set on fire or ransacked by gangs in the capital and the nearby Artibonite region. Two gang-orchestrated prison breaks led to the escape of 4,600 inmates.
At least 2,652 people have been killed and 1,280 injured as of June 30th, the U.N. said. Another 893 people had been kidnapped and held for ransom by gangs.
Money is 'utmost priority'
The alarming level of violence should be the international mission's "utmost priority," Volker Turk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said after the report's release. The mission, he added, needs "sufficient equipment and personnel to counter the criminal gangs effectively and sustainably, and stop them spreading further and wreaking havoc on people's lives."
The administration official doesn't disagree. He said while there were initially doubts about the international mission, there has been progress on the ground.
"There was skepticism that a force would ever be deployed; there was skepticism that the force would ever be equipped, be welcomed by the Haitian people, that it would actually carry out operations. Those were all things people pointed to last year," the official told the Herald.
But a year after the U.S. began lobbying to support the mission— and four months after the first contingent of specialized Kenyan police officers began deploying to Haiti — opinions have changed, he said.
"This year... there were numerous people who came out and said 'We overcame all of the issues that made people skeptical in the past and there should be no excuse for not supporting this effort more robustly now and going forward,' " the official added.
Despite the dozens of conflicts unfolding around the world, Haiti got a fair share of mentions during the first week of the U.N.'s high-level debate last week. A number of world leaders raised the need for security and humanitarian funding.
On Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called on nations to do their part. He co-chaired, with Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille, a high-level meeting of the Ad Hoc Advisory Group on Haiti of the Economic and Social Council. Trudeau announced an additional $12.2 million in new commitments to Haiti.
In his speech at the general assembly, Ruto, the Kenyan president, appealed for "all member states to stand in solidarity with the Haitian people."
"Our support for the Haitian national police has significantly advanced the pacification of cities and towns, protected critical infrastructure, and relieved many communities previously held captive by criminal gangs," he said.
Latin American nations
The State Department official said staffing the mission, which also received an offer of 150 military police officers from Guatemala and 50 from Suriname, isn't the problem. It's finding the money to pay for it.
"We have enough countries that are willing to send people. The issue is we have to house them, train them, we have to equip them and that all costs money," he said.
He welcomes the support especially from several Latin American nations that had remained on the sidelines.
Chile has said it will help, but hasn't provided specifics. Argentina has offered to provide troops to help run a military hospital and a water purification system in conjunction with Uruguay.
The water purification offer is important, the official said, because it would assist with the operating bases the mission is trying to build to maintain control of areas where they have pushed out the gangs. The Dominican Republic is providing $10 million in support through a cooperation with El Salvador, which is providing helicopters for a Medivac operation.
"There are some very concrete things people put out there," said the U.S. official.
In other instances, he said, the pledges were not well defined: "It's hard to say exactly what they are going to be providing. Some noted that pledges they made in the past were actually in the process of depositing in the U.N. Trust Fund this week or in the coming weeks."
The U.S. has provided the bulk of the funds for the mission, at over $300 million, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the U.S. will contributed an additional $160 million. The official said a little more than $100 million will go toward development aid and the rest toward paying for equipment and training for the mission members.
He said training and vetting for some of the additional forces, including contingents from the Caribbean, continues.
The number of police officers and other forces are not the issue, the official stressed. "Our issue is the financial resources, not people."
"There's just not enough money," he said. "We've got to raise more money."
The official said a number of other nations also pledged financial support on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly, including France which will add to the U.N. trust fund. But the amounts of the new pledges, which fall somewhere between $15 million and $20 million, still fall short of what's needed.
