Kenya open to expanding foreign mission to UN operation — RT Africa

President William Ruto has proposed that Kenya’s mission to combat criminal gangs and militant groups in Haiti could be transformed into a full-scale UN peacekeeping operation.

Ruto travelled to the Caribbean country over the weekend to assess the progress of the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS). Kenya is playing a crucial role in the operation to prevent the spread of rampant gang violence that has led to years of political unrest and mass displacement.

“As for the proposal to convert this into a full UN peacekeeping mission, we have absolutely no problem with that, if that is the direction the UN Security Council wants to take,” Ruto said in Port-au-Prince.

A team of hundreds of Kenyan police officers arrived in Haiti on June 25 as part of an international force. The island nation had requested assistance in 2022, following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise the previous year.

Kenya agreed to lead the mission after months of pleas from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for a specific country to take charge. Nairobi agreed to provide 1,000 police officers in October last year, with the mission going ahead despite the East African country’s high court declaring it unconstitutional.

Ruto also confirmed that Kenya will send another 600 police officers to Haiti in the coming weeks to help combat gangs that control large parts of the capital and surrounding regions.

“Our next batch, an additional 600, are undergoing redeployment training. We will be mission-ready in a few weeks and look forward to the support required to make their deployment possible,” Ruto added.

The UN Security Council is expected to meet in late September to decide whether to extend Kenya’s current mandate in Haiti for another year, paving the way for a full peacekeeping mission in 2025.

However, the MSS mission has been criticized for delays in deploying personnel. UN human rights expert William O’Neil also highlighted that the mission in Haiti remains under-equipped, with a lack of helicopters, night-vision goggles and drones.

“The MSS, which was authorized by the UN Security Council in October 2023, has so far deployed less than a quarter of its planned contingent,” O’Neil noted Friday.

According to the UN, some 2,500 people were killed in gang attacks in Haiti in the first quarter of this year, displacing 580,000 of them. More than half of them were children.

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