No cops for Haiti: Kenya court blocks sending police to help fight kidnapping gangs

Kenya’s High Court ruled Friday that the East African nation cannot deploy 1,000 police officers to help Haiti fight criminal gangs, dealing a devastating blow to supporters of an armed intervention into the country to help its national police.

The High Court in Nairobi made the decision Friday after hearing a constitutional challenge to the plan, which had the support of the United Nations. The court ruled that only members of the military can be sent out of the country to participate in foreign operations like the one proposed for Haiti. Under Kenyan law, police officers can only be deployed if there is “a reciprocal arrangement” with the host country, the court’s only judge, Enock Chacha Mwita, ruled. There is currently no such agreement with Haiti. The decision to deploy Kenyan police, he said, was “unconstitutional” and “illegal.”

In a statement, government spokesman Isaac Maigua Mwaura said the government will challenge the ruling. After the high court, there is the court of appeal and then the Kenya Supreme Court.

“Kenya has an outstanding track record of contributing to peacekeeping missions internationally in countries such as South Sudan, Namibia, Croatia, Liberia, Sierra Leone among others,” Mwaura said. “The government reiterates its commitment in honoring its international obligations as a member of the community and comity of nations.”

The decision raises serious questions about the international push to help Haiti, and what comes next. Kenyan President William Ruto first volunteered his East African nation to lead an international effort to help Haiti in July. In a speech before the United Nations two months later, he called on the U.N. Security Council to approve a resolution penned by the United States and Ecuador approving the deployment.

But after the Security Council passed the resolution for a non-U.N. multinational armed force, the High Court in Kenya put a hold on the deployment until it could hear the challenge.

Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, said the need for the multinational force “remains extremely high.” He reminded journalists at a press briefing that it was not the U.N. that designated Kenya for help, but the country’s own authorities who stepped forward.

“We need urgent action. We need urgent funding and we hope that member states will continue to do their part and then some,” he said during a press briefing in New York.

On Thursday, members of the Security Council expressed worries about the spreading violence in the troubled Caribbean nation. Diplomats, including Haiti’s foreign minister, Jean Victor Geneus, pleaded for the rapid deployment of the Multinational Security Support mission. The situation, he said, has gotten sadder and bleaker with the security and humanitarian situation deteriorating.

“The Haitian people can’t take it anymore,” Geneus said.

Last year, Haiti saw gang-related killings double, he said, to at least 5,000 people and kidnappings soared to more than 2,900. As many as 37 police officers were killed by gangs.

“In our country, statistics are sometimes problematic, and so the reality is probably worse,” Geneus said. “The situation has prompted over 200,000 people to become internally displaced; they’ve fled their neighborhoods, their homes, which are sometimes being settled by the gangs.”

In response to the Kenya court’s ruling, the president of the Chamber of Deputies in the Dominican Republic, Alfredo Pacheco, said his nation, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, will need to tighten security measures to prevent a spillover of the spreading violence. Increased tensions along the border this week led to a shutdown of Ounanminthe, the northern Haitian city bordering the Dominican town of Dajabón, by protesters seeking to remove Prime Minister Ariel Henry from power.

“Every day, the situation in Haiti becomes incredibly more complicated,” Pacheco told journalists. “We have to agree that the international community is perhaps underestimating the problems occurring in Haiti.”

In addition to escalating gang violence and kidnappings, a former rebel leader and convicted felon who 20 years ago launched a violent coup against the president has launched “a revolution” to oust Henry.

Guy Philippe is demanding the resignation of Henry, who has been governing since President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated on July 7, 2021 inside his bedroom in the hills above Port-au-Prince. Earlier this week, Philippe’s supporters marched through the streets of Haiti’s Central Plateau shutting down government offices. They are attempting to make their way into Port-au-Prince by crossing gang-controlled territory.

On Thursday, the Dominican Republic expressed concerns about Philippe’s tactics during the Security Council’s session on Haiti. Foreign Minister Roberto Alvarez, pleading for the rapid deployment of a force to help Haiti, said “the situation has been ripe for the emergence of new political movers who, putting themselves forward as messiahs, are acting opportunistically and are damaging and destabilizing as the gangs.”

“These sectors have gone so far as to call for an insurrection and for civil disobedience,” Alvarez said. “We firmly reject these extremely harmful influences for Haitian democracy.”

But much of the focus at the U.N. meeting was on the armed gangs, with representatives insisting that to confront the challenges in Haiti and put an end to the violence the multinational security support mission must be deployed as soon as possible. They argued that any delay in the deployment threatens any opportunity for the restoration of security to Haiti.

Tirana Hassan, executive director of Human Rights Watch, told the Security Council that Haitians told her group about struggling to feed their families in the midst of the violence, and while aware of past problems Haitians have faced with foreign forces, “they recognize that international support is needed now.”

In addition to Kenya, several African and Caribbean countries, including Jamaica, volunteered to field the mission. But they were considered too small to lead the effort.

Kenya’s permanent representative to the U.N., Martin Kimani, told the Council that his government has made significant progress in preparing for the mission. But he also acknowledged that there remain gaps in funding and equipment.

So far, the government of Henry, who pressed for international help after gangs took control of the country’s main fuel terminal in Port-au-Prince in the fall of 2022, has remained silent on Friday’s news from Kenya.

Others said they were disappointed with the court’s decision, although some Haiti observers said they were not surprised given concerns about past international forces and the ongoing political crisis in Haiti. Despite repeated calls from the international community, Henry and his opponents have been unable to reach an agreement on how to move ahead with long overdue elections.

“The Kenya-led international intervention could have brought some relief and improved access to critical public infrastructure such as roads, administration buildings, hospitals, schools, and markets,” said Laurent Uwumuremyi, the director of Mercy Corps., an international aid agency working in Haiti. “However, based on past experience with international missions ..., international interventions have had disastrous consequences.”

“Solutions for Haiti, including those to bolster the Haitian National Police and the army to tamp down violence and return some semblance of security, should be led by Haitians,” Uwumuremyi added.

The effort to send a multinational force to Haiti was led by the United States, which was seeking a way to avoid sending another U.N. peacekeeping mission to Haiti. As part of its campaign to get other nations to support the measure, the U.S. stressed that it would be a law enforcement, not a military effort.

The decision by the high court in Nairobi blocking the participation of Kenya’s police raises difficult questions for supporters of the multinational force, including whether to push for the deployment of a traditional U.N. peacekeeping mission, and whether Kenya could still lead the effort using troops instead of police.