Kenyan President William Ruto has landed in Haiti's capital to assess a Kenyan-led security mission in the Caribbean nation, a day after a United Nations expert warned that Haiti faces rising violence and insecurity.
In a statement on Saturday, a spokesman 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 officials arrived in Haiti as part of a UN-backed multinational mission aimed at tackling a rise in gang violence.
Haiti has been plagued by years of violence as armed groups, often linked to the country's political and business leaders, vie for influence and control of territory.
A surge in attacks in Port-au-Prince in late February prompted the resignation of Haiti's unelected prime minister, the creation of a transitional presidential council and the deployment of Kenyan police.
President @WilliamsRuto arrives in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 100 days after the Kenyan police contingent of the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) in Haiti was launched.
The President is in Haiti to assess the progress of the MSS mission, visit and congratulate Kenya…
— Hussein Mohamed, MBS (@HusseinMohamedg) September 21, 2024
However, despite the presence of Kenyan and other foreign police officers in the country, insecurity remains rampant and armed groups are believed to still control around 80 percent of Port-au-Prince.
As of August, more than 578,000 Haitians had been internally displaced, largely due to violence, according to data (PDF) from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Displaced families have been forced to live in precarious conditions while they wait to return safely to their homes.
On Friday, William O'Neill, the UN expert on human rights in Haiti, said the country was facing a serious humanitarian crisis as armed groups continued to exert influence and carry out attacks.
He added that 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 they have received is inadequate and their resources are insufficient,” O'Neill said at the end of a visit to the country.
The Haitian National Police, for its part, still lacks the “logistical and technical capacity to counter the gangs,” he said.
“This ongoing agony must end. 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 main sponsor of the deployment, has been pushing for more funding and personnel to bolster the force.
“The United States has been actively working to secure this additional support,” said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who visited Port-au-Prince in early September.
Blinken added that he plans to convene a meeting at the U.N. General Assembly this month “to encourage increased contributions to help meet Haiti’s security needs, its economic needs, its humanitarian needs, as well as to renew the mandate of the mission.”
Citing anonymous sources, The Miami Herald reported on September 4 that Washington was exploring the possibility of transforming the mission into a UN peacekeeping operation.
“In coordination with its partners, the United States is exploring options to strengthen the Multinational Security Support mission and ensure that the support the MSS is providing to Haitians is sustained over the long term and ultimately paves the way for security conditions that allow for free and fair elections,” a national security official told the American newspaper.
However, many Haitians remain wary of UN interventions, saying past deployments have done more harm than good. For example, a deadly cholera outbreak in 2010 was linked to a UN peacekeeping base, while UN forces have been accused of sexual abuse in the past.
The UN-backed security mission also suffered numerous delays and was the subject of initial criticism.
But Haitian civil society groups have said help is needed to stop the violence.
They added that a security deployment alone cannot solve the country's systemic problems, and urged that safeguards be put in place to prevent possible abuses by the international police force.
