Message at the UN: Kenya-led security mission to Haiti needs foreign financial support

Foreign governments are being urged to make good on pledges to fund the armed Kenya-led security force in Haiti, where criminal armed groups continue spread misery and despair while controlling more than 80% of the capital.

“We call on all international partners to do more and give more,” said Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States’ ambassador to the United Nations during a Security Council meeting Wednesday. “The Haitian people deserve, at long last, to live in peace — to go to work, school, or a house of worship without the threat of violence.”

In all, Kenya has volunteered to deploy 1,000 of its specialized police officers to lead what is known as the Multinational Security Support mission. Six other mostly Caribbean and African nations are also supposed to send personnel. But the mission’s success and the size of its force very much depend on the contributions of the international community, which pledged $118 million in support but has so far only deposited $21 million in a United Nations trust fund.

The United States is by far the largest contributor, providing more than $309 million for equipment, training and construction of a base in Port-au-Prince.

While addressing the U.N. Security Council on the ongoing crisis, Thomas-Greenfield and others called for the international community to accelerate efforts to provide the country with the support it needs to build democratic institutions and to restore peace and stability amid alarming violence.

“Member states have to walk the talk when it comes to supporting the mission,” said Bob Rae, Canada’s ambassador to the U.N. said. “Let us all come to terms with one thing: Haitians like all of us, every single one of us, require security to be able to safely leave our homes without fear of being killed, kidnapped, or raped.”

Security force’s first steps

The first contingent of 200 Kenyan police officers arrived in Haiti last week and have been slowly taking to the streets on patrols. Though armed gangs did not make good on a threat to stop the deployment, they have tried to test the forces, temporarily taking over one police station before police regained control and then setting fire to another one. Both are located south of the capital, which has become off-limits to most Haitians.

María Isabel Salvador, the head of the United Nations Integrated Office in Port-au-Prince, known by its French acronym, BINUH, told the council the arrival of the specialized officers after months of delays is an important step and renews hope for the people of Haiti. However, with 3,252 murders recorded since January, including 20 police officers killed by armed gangs, Haiti remains in a vicious cycle of killing by armed gangs and so-called vigilante, self-defense groups.

“I remain deeply disturbed by indiscriminate violence and grave abuses perpetrated by armed gangs against children. Equally worrisome is the prevalence of threats and attacks against human rights defenders, journalists and members of the judiciary, many of whom have been forced to limit or stop their work, or even to flee the country,” she said.

Salvador said the gangs’ recurrent attacks since Feb. 29 also “have severely hampered national and international efforts to fast track the recruitment process of new police officers and attrition rates in the national police continue to be high.”

Salvador’s comments come as the Security Council weighs the fate of her political office in Haiti, whose mission some members stressed is even more important now and necessary for the success of the mission amid criticism that previous foreign interventions have failed to break Haiti’s cycle of instability.

Some optimism at U.N

During the meeting, council members expressed cautious optimism over what they described as a new momentum in Haiti after months of gang attacks, a shuttered airport and seaport and the capital becoming paralyzed by the violence..

In a separate press call, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian A. Nichols and Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Todd D. Robinson both touted the missions arrival, and the changes taking place.

Neither Nichols nor Robinson would say when the next contingent of Kenyan officers would arrive. Robinson also declined to go into details on whether, for example, the Kenya-forces would go into areas controlled by gangs, a question many Haitians have been wondering. The mandate of the mission, he said, is to work with the Haitian police but at all times the “Haitian forces are going to be in the lead on all of these operations.”

For now, the U.S. is looking at a maximum capacity of around 1,000 personnel for the mission but will assess the mission’s needs once the number has been reached, the officials said.

Nichols said that the U.S.’s support for the people of Haiti remains unwavering and touted the international experience and technical skills of Prime Minister Garry Conille, who welcomed the international community’s support for Haiti but also criticized their approach.

“The difficulties facing Haiti are enormous with an inflation rate in excess of 27%, almost 50% of jobs lost in the textile sector alone and food insecurity affecting 4.5 million people, not to mention 600,000 [internally displaced persons] and 500,000 children out of school,” he said. “There’s also violence paralyzing hospitals and health care centers. Dozens of police stations and prisons have been damaged or destroyed and thousands of prisoners are on the loose.”

Before his appearance at the U.N., where he worked as a longtime development expert, Conille visited Washington. While there, he and his delegation met with members of the Biden administration, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, congressional lawmakers and financial donors, which have curtailed funding to Haiti due to the ongoing gang violence and concerns over corruption. Following a meeting with representatives of the Inter-American Development Bank, which is currently accessing the financial impact of the recent gang attacks on infrastructure, Conille announced Haiti would receive $40 million in aid.

An IDB spokesperson told the Miami Herald that the $40 million isn’t necessarily new money but unallocated funding from the 2023-2024 net income allocation to Haiti for concessional resources.

Addressing the Security Council, Conille said: “Together with our international partners, we need to revisit the support given to Haiti.”

Conille has less than two years to give Haiti a newly elected president and parliament by February 2026. In itself, it is a huge challenge. But during his address to the Security Council, he also spoke of reforming the Haiti National Police and establishing adequate infrastructure that complies with modern building standards as well as the reorganization of certain towns, the rehabilitation and re-establishment of basic functional social services and creating employment opportunities for communities.

For Haiti to “escape the spiral of security missions once and for all,” Conille said, “we need to redefine our approaches so that by the end of the MSS, the country will have strong and effective institutions and our international partners as well as ourselves will have a sense of accomplishment.”