Another 200 Kenyan police officers have left for Haiti as part of a UN-backed mission to combat persistent gang violence in the troubled Caribbean nation, top officers announced Tuesday.
The deployment comes after the East African nation dispatched 400 officers to the violence-ravaged Haitian capital Port-au-Prince in June as part of a contentious offer to send 1,000 police to help stabilize the country.
The promise, made by ailing President William Ruto in an attempt to quell boiling anti-government rallies at home, has been met with continuous legal challenges in Kenya.
“We have 200 police officers who left last night and should arrive in Haiti this morning,” a senior officer told AFP on Tuesday. “They are joining their colleagues who are already on the ground.”
Another senior police source confirmed to AFP that the cops left on Monday night via chartered plane, adding that “more will be departing soon until we have all 1,000.”
The East African nation is heading a force of approximately 2,500 people.
Other countries, primarily from Africa and the Caribbean, are also contributing to the mission, which is endorsed but not managed by the United Nations.
On July 1, Kenya’s National Police Service issued a statement denying reports that seven officers had been murdered in Haiti.
The deployed forces were “warmly received,” and “all safe and ready to discharge their clear and specific mandate,” according to the statement.
They’ve been “working closely with their host, the Haitian National Police, and have so far undertaken strategic mapping of the likely areas of operational concerns and conducted several joint patrols within Port-au-Prince” .
Rule of Law
The deployment was approved by a UN Security Council resolution in October, but it was delayed by a Kenyan court judgment in January, which found it unlawful.
The court ruled that Ruto’s administration had no power to send officers abroad without a prior bilateral agreement.
While the government reached an agreement with Haiti in March, a small opposition party, Thirdway Alliance Kenya, has launched another lawsuit to block it.
The United States has been actively seeking a country to lead the operation and is providing finance and logistical support.
However, President Joe Biden has bluntly refused to send US troops to Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas where Washington has intervened in the past.
Human Rights Watch has expressed reservations about the Haiti mission and questioned its funding, while Kenyan police have been regularly accused of employing excessive force and committing unlawful executions.
Haiti has always been plagued by gang violence, but things deteriorated dramatically at the end of February when armed groups launched coordinated attacks in Port-au-Prince, claiming they sought to oust then-Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
The violence in Port-au-Prince has hampered food security and humanitarian aid access, with gangs in control of much of the city, accused of crimes such as murder, rape, looting, and kidnapping.