Kenya has deployed 217 more police officers to Haiti to provide backup to an understaffed security mission in the Caribbean country where spiralling gang violence has displaced more than a million people, including one in eight children.
The police officers were greeted by Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime on their arrival at Port-au-Prince airport on Saturday and will join the 400 Kenyan officers deployed last year.
"The arrival of these reinforcements marks a crucial step in freeing our country from the grip of criminal networks and restoring peace," the prime minister said.
Kenya began sending troops to Haiti in June as part of the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) under the auspices of the United Nations.
Some 10 countries - including Guatemala, El Salvador, Jamaica and Belize - have together pledged over 3,100 troops, but so far few have deployed.
"Our commitment to this historic mission is unwavering," said Kenyan Interior Minister Kipchumba Murkomen as he shared a photo of himself with some of the officers aboard a plane.
"We will continue to mobilise all the necessary international support for it to succeed," he said in a social media post.
Haiti witness recounts gang massacre driven by witchcraft claims
Criminal gangs still rife
President William Ruto has pledged to deploy 1,000 troops as part of the MSS force, but Reuters news agency reported last month that nearly 20 people in the initial deployment had submitted letters of resignation from the anti-gang mission due to pay delays and poor conditions.
The MSS in Haiti denied it had received resignations.
The UN estimates that more than 80 percent of the Haitian capital is still controlled by criminal gangs.
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Gang violence has left more than 700,000 Haitians homeless in recent years, with many crowding into makeshift and unsanitary shelters after gunmen razed their homes.
Gangs tighten their grip on Haiti as peacekeeping debate drags on
More than 5,600 deaths were reported across Haiti last year, according to the UN Human Rights Office. The number of killings increased by more than 20 percent compared with all of 2023, it said.
According to latest estimates, "there are now over one million internally displaced people in Haiti, over half of them children in urgent need of humanitarian assistance", the United Nation's Children's Fund (Unicef) said on Saturday.
The UN Security Council renewed the MSS mission in September 2024, for another year. But no decision was made on whether to make it a full UN peacekeeping operation, as urged by Antonio Rodrigue, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Haiti.
(with newswires)
