(Ottawa) The United Nations should give the green light this Monday to send a multinational peacekeeping mission to Haiti. Led by Kenya, financially supported by the United States, its objective is to end the violence raging in the country and pave the way for elections to be held for the first time since 2016.
The United Nations Security Council is due to vote late this afternoon on a resolution drafted by the United States, which provides for the sending of 1,000 security agents from Kenya. It would authorize the force for one year, with a review after nine months, according to the Associated Press, which obtained the resolution.
The Biden administration, which has put intense pressure on the Canadian government to lead a multinational force, would fund the operation to the tune of $100 million. It was ultimately Kenya, an English-speaking nation located thousands of kilometers from Haiti, which raised its hand.
Although he judges that Ottawa did well to resist pressure from Washington, the former Canadian ambassador to Haiti, Gilles Rivard, is concerned about what happens next.
It’s far from obvious what’s coming. Kenya is an English-speaking country, which has never come close to having an embassy in Haiti.
Gilles Rivard, former Canadian ambassador to Haiti
At the same time, this force external to the United Nations, “it is not better, and it is not worse than a peacekeeping mission where countries like Sri Lanka or Bangladesh” are deployed in Haiti , explains the former diplomat.
But the fact remains that the solution to the Haitian crisis should be Haitian, Gilles Rivard persists in believing.
Canada shares the same reading: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations, Bob Rae, have often argued that it is necessary to learn from past mistakes to justify their refusal to send troops to the Caribbean island.
They also called for democratic elections to be held. The last presidential elections in Haiti date back to 2016 — and its winner, Jovenel Moïse, was executed in July 2021. Prime Minister Ariel Henry has been in charge since that time.
PHOTO CRAIG RUTTLE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry during his speech at the UN on September 22
“It has been 27 months since President Moïse was assassinated, and we are still discussing how we are going to carry out an electoral process. Twenty-seven months! The country is plunged into a perfect storm, but we talk,” laments former ambassador Rivard.
At United Nations headquarters about two weeks ago, Prime Minister Trudeau would not say whether Canada would participate in the Kenyan-led mission. So far, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Antigua and Barbuda have indicated their intention to deploy police forces alongside Kenya.
In what looks like a quid pro quo, the United States and Kenya recently signed an agreement guiding the two countries’ defense relations for the next five years as the war in East Africa against the group extremist al-Shabab linked to al-Qaeda is intensifying.
With the Associated Press