(Nairobi) A Kenyan police force will leave for Haiti on June 25 to lead a UN-backed mission to combat gang violence in the Caribbean country, government and police sources said on Sunday.
Kenya has offered to send a thousand police officers to stabilize Haiti, alongside personnel sent by several other countries.
But this deployment has faced several legal challenges in the East African country.
President William Ruto, an enthusiastic supporter of the mission, had recently declared that the deployment would take place within a few weeks.
“The departure is Tuesday this week,” said a source at the Interior Ministry on condition of anonymity.
“Preparations are underway for the team to leave for Haiti on Tuesday,” confirmed a highly placed police source on condition of anonymity.
“We already have two preparatory teams who left, one last week and another yesterday” on Saturday, according to the police source.
The mission was approved by a UN Security Council resolution last October, but in Kenya the operation sparked strong criticism and a Kenyan court postponed the deployment until January, with the judge ruling that the Kenyan government was not He did not have the authority to send police officers abroad without special authorization.
The government obtained this authorization on 1er March, but a small Kenyan opposition party filed a new appeal to try to block the process.
Countries other than Kenya have said they want to participate in the mission, including Benin, the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados and Chad.
The mission, in which the United States is very involved logistically – without however providing men – must support the Haitian police in the fight against the gangs which terrorize the population.
The NGO Human Rights Watch said in a press release published at the end of May that the mission was facing questions regarding “respect for human rights”, but also financing.
Human rights organizations regularly accuse Kenyan police of excessive use of force and extrajudicial killings.
On Friday, an NGO monitoring police activity said it was investigating accusations that a 29-year-old man was shot dead by police after protests in Nairobi.
A poor Caribbean country, Haiti has suffered from chronic political instability for decades.
The capital Port-au-Prince is 80% in the hands of criminal gangs, accused of numerous abuses, in particular murders, rapes, looting and kidnappings for ransom.
The population is also facing a serious humanitarian crisis, with shortages of food, medicine and other basic goods.