As Haiti gang crisis grows more violent, Kenyan court blocks plan to send security forces

The fate of a Kenya-led multinational security mission to help Haiti’s police put down dangerous armed gangs remains up in the air after a court in Kenya on Tuesday extended its order barring the deployment for two more weeks.

Earlier this month, the highest court in Kenya blocked any deployment until Oct. 24 in order to hear a challenge by former presidential candidate Ekuru Aukot, who filed a petition saying that Kenya’s offer to help Haiti conflicts with the country’s constitution.

He and other opponents of President William Ruto’s offer criticize the president for agreeing to send 1,000 Kenyan security forces to Haiti when Kenya is dealing with militant attacks and ethnic clashes.

The high court said it would now rule on the case on Nov. 9, which extends the uncertainty as the gang violence in Haiti continues to worsen. The deployment has yet to be voted by Kenya’s national assembly.

On Monday, members of the U.N. Security Council, which authorized the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission for Haiti a week before the court challenge, made clear that Haiti couldn’t afford to wait for help and that deployment needs to happen sooner rather than later. Children were increasingly being killed or injured in the crossfire, and one in four schools has been closed since last year, the Security Council was told.

Meanwhile, half of the Haiti’s population is now in need of humanitarian assistance, including nearly three million children.

“Unfortunately, the security situation on the ground continues to deteriorate as growing gang violence plunges the lives of the people of Haiti into disarray and major crimes are rising sharply to new record highs,” Maria Isabel Salvador, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’ special representative in Haiti, told the Security Council. “Killings, Sexual violence, including collective rape and mutilation, continue to be used by gangs every day and in the context of ineffective service support for victims, or a robust justice response.”

Vigilante groups also continue to add a layer of complexity to the security crisis, she said. Between April 24 and Sept. 30, the U.N. Integrated Office in Haiti registered the lynching of at least 395 alleged gang members. Salvador as well as Mirlande Manigat, a former first lady and presidential candidate who currently heads the High Transition Council, informed the group that last Wednesday its secretary-general, Anthony Virginie Saint-Pierre, was kidnapped in the middle of the day by members of a gang dressed as police officers. The High Transition Council is tasked with helping Prime Minister Ariel Henry prepare a road map for elections.

“His kidnapping was certainly not by chance,” said an upset Manigat.

Catherine Russell, the executive director of UNICEF, told the Security Council that abductions for ransom have skyrocketed. Meanwhile, students, teachers, and health workers are subjected to threats daily, leading to skilled workers, who are desperately needed to deliver essential services, to flee their communities and even Haiti, entirely.

“An estimated two million people, including 1.6 million women and children, live in areas under their effective control,” Russell said. “And they are expanding their operations outside of the capital, perpetrating extreme levels of violence in both Port-au-Prince and neighboring Artibonite.“

This along, with the strangling of major transport routes from the capital to elsewhere in the country, along with other life-threatening conditions is causing “an intensifying food security and nutrition crisis — especially for children,” Russell said. “Since last year, we have seen an unprecedented 30% increase in the number of children suffering from severe wasting to more than 115,000 nationally.”

Since July, the Security Council has approved three resolutions related to Haiti, all penned by the United States and Ecuador. First it unanimously re-authorized and strengthened the mandate of the Integrated Office in Haiti; on Oct. 2, members authorized the deployment of the Multinational Security Support mission under Chapter VII, with Russia and China abstaining; and last week it unanimously agreed to renew a sanctions regime for Haiti, and asked a committee to provide new names to designate based on a blistering report by a panel of experts that highlighted several high-profile connections to gangs in the country.

“The United States has voted to support each of these resolutions precisely because... the situation in Haiti continues to grow more dire,” said Ambassador Robert Wood, the United States’ alternative representative for Special Political Affairs at the U.N. The aim of the Multinational Security Support mission, Wood said, is to support the Haiti National Police as the force works to improve security. He said it is a task that requires help from the U.N. Integrated Office in tackling other challenges, including helping Haiti’s political and civil society groups break a political stalemate and come up with a plan for governing the country that will lead to elections.

“The Multinational Security Support mission, which this council mandated earlier this month, is an important step to help the Haitian National Police address the deteriorating security situation in their country and we pay tribute to Kenya and other countries who are stepping up,” United Kingdom Ambassador James Kariuki said at the U.N. Security Council meeting. “But this mission will not alone solve the multidimensional crisis in Haiti.

“We call on all political actors to put aside their differences for the common interest of the Haitian people and agree on a road map that commits all parties to working toward a return to long-term stable governance,” he said.

The Security Council’s vote authorizing the deployment of non-United Nations Multinational Support Security Mission to Haiti came after Ruto in late July said his East African nation would positively consider leading such a force on several conditions. They included the findings of a security assessment mission to Haiti, authorization by the U.N. Security Council and at least 2,000 personnel fielded by other nations in the hemisphere.

Officials from the United States, which has pledged $200 million in support, have not specified how large the mission would be, but have said they have received pledges of support and continue to urge nations to help by offering troops, funding or equipment.

A week after the Security Council’s vote, the high court in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, blocked any deployment until Oct. 24 in order to hear the challenge. The non-United Nations combat mission is also opposed by some members of the Haitian diaspora, who sent an open letter to President Biden.

Manigat, addressing the Security Council by video from Port-au-Prince, said the support troops are something “a large amount of the population is awaiting, including people who’ve been real victims.”

Thousands of children, she said, are not able to go to their schools, patients are succumbing to their wounds because they simply cannot get to hospitals and merchants are being deprived of their livelihoods because their goods “have been destroyed, pillaged or burned by the gangs.” She added pregnant women are dying because their doctors have been abducted or could not get to them because of the lack of security.

“It is the policeman or woman who is powerless because of a lack of means, and who feel helpless” she said. “I urge you not to remain indifferent to the frustrations of these desperately disappointed young people who are condemned to begging, to corruption, to perversion, to crime and to drunkenness, all things that go along with a life in a criminal gang.”

The resolution mandating the security mission, Manigat said, “brings a new breath of hope to these people who are bogged down in the pit of insecurity. Suffering Haiti is speaking through me.”

“It’s time to provide the aid that has been pledged,” she said. “I do very much hope that the Security Council of the United Nations will move from words to action.”