After a year of delay, the UN Security Council gave the green light on Monday to sending a multinational mission to Haiti led by Kenya to help the police overwhelmed by gangs, also expanding the embargo on weapons.
Rapes used as a weapon of terror, snipers on roofs, people burned alive, kidnappings for ransoms… While the violence of the gangs which control the majority of the capital Port-au-Prince continues to worsen, the Haitian Prime Minister, Ariel Henry and UN Secretary General António Guterres have been calling for a mission to support the police for a year almost to the day.
But, within an international community burned by past experiences in the country and the risks of finding itself trapped in a deadly quagmire, it was difficult to find a volunteer to take the lead.
Until the end of last July when Kenya finally announced that it was ready to lead this non-UN force and deploy 1,000 men in this poor Caribbean country.
According to the resolution adopted Monday by 13 votes in favor and 2 abstentions (China and Russia) after difficult negotiations, this non-UN “multinational security support mission” is created for “an initial period of twelve months”, with a reassessment after nine.
It aims to “provide operational support to the Haitian police” in their fight against gangs and for the security of schools, ports, hospitals and airports.
With the aim of improving security sufficiently to organize elections, although no polls have taken place since 2016.
In cooperation with the Haitian authorities, the mission will be able, “to prevent loss of life”, to employ temporary and proportionate “emergency measures” “on an exceptional basis”, in particular via arrests, in compliance with international law.
In a recent report, António Guterres underlined that the economic, political and security crisis that Haiti is going through has further worsened over the past year, with gangs “more numerous and better armed” than the approximately 14,000 police officers counted at the end of June 2023.
In total, nearly 2,800 murders were counted between October 2022 and June 2023, of which nearly 80 concerned minors, according to this report.
Arms trafficking
This violence is fueled by arms trafficking mainly from the United States, particularly from Florida via the Haitian diaspora. A situation widely criticized in recent months by China, which considered that a possible mission was meaningless without stopping the flow of weapons to the gangs.
Under pressure from China, which has a right of veto in the Security Council, the resolution also generalizes the embargo on small arms and ammunition, until now only applicable to gang leaders targeted by the regime of sanctions put in place in October 2022 and which at this stage only concerns one individual.
“Arms trafficking is an issue that the United States takes very seriously, including in Haiti,” a US government official assured Monday.
Washington also intends to provide logistical and financial support for the new mission, but not security forces on the ground.
The resolution does not specify the composition of the mission, noting that the deployment schedule and the number of personnel will be developed by future participants with the Haitian government. The figure of 2,000 members of the police has, however, often been mentioned in recent months.
The resolution welcomes “several countries” considering participation, but at this stage few of them are known, apart from Jamaica, the Bahamas and Antigua and Barbuda.
The bad memory of MINUSTAH
The draft resolution also calls on the future mission to “take appropriate measures regarding wastewater management” to prevent the spread of diseases.
A recommendation probably intended to reassure the Haitians, who have very bad memories of the last international force deployed on their territory.
Blue helmets from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), present from 2004 to 2017, had in fact brought cholera, leading to an epidemic that caused more than 10,000 deaths. This episode partly explains why the future force will not be created under the UN flag.