Haiti mission extended for one year

The UN Security Council has extended its authorisation of the multinational policing mission in crime-ravaged Haiti, but without any call to transform it into a UN peacekeeping mission, as suggested by Port-au-Prince.

The resolution, adopted unanimously, expressed “deep concern about the situation in Haiti including violence, criminal activities and mass displacement.”

The UN said on Friday that more than 3,600 people have been killed this year in “senseless” gang violence ravaging the country.

The Kenyan-led policing mission seeking to assist the Haitian national police in taking back control of areas under gang control was extended until October 2, 2025.

Though it is operating under the UN and Haitian government’s blessing, it is not a UN-run force.

Several months after the Council’s first green light in October 2023, Kenya began deploying its first contingents in June this year. The force now numbers around 400 personnel -- with more than a dozen officers from each Jamaica and Belize.

Last week, President William Ruto pledged that the deployment would be completed by January, bringing the total to 2,500.

Ruto said Kenya and other African and Caribbean countries were ready to deploy but were being hindered by insufficient equipment, logistics and funding.

With the mission hobbled by a chronic lack of funding, Edgard Leblanc Fils, the head of transitional council governing Haiti, told the General Assembly last week he “would like to see a thought being given to transforming the security support mission into a peacekeeping mission under the mandate of the UN.”

Such a move would allow it to raise necessary funds, he said, echoing a recent proposal from Washington.

The first version of the extension resolution, drafted by the United States and Ecuador, called for planning to begin for a transition from the security deployment to a full-blown UN peacekeeping operation.

But after fraught negotiations which were marked by opposition from China and Russia, according to diplomatic sources, the adopted text makes no reference to such a shift.

Instead the resolution as adopted “encourages the MSS mission to accelerate its deployment, and further encourages additional voluntary contributions and support for the mission.”

Guinea, ruled by a junta since a putsch in 2021, offered to contribute 650 police officers to the mission.

About 600,000 people were displaced in the first six months of 2024 and 1,280 were injured in gang violence, including 295 women and 63 children, the UN rights office (OHCHR) said in a report. At least 893 individuals, including 25 children, were kidnapped and held for ransom by criminal groups, who are vying for power in a vacuum left by political crisis and weak state authority.

“No more lives should be lost to this senseless criminality,” said Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The OHCHR urged Haitian authorities and the international community to do more to protect people on the Caribbean island.

“We are raising the alarm,” rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva, warning that “illicit flows of arms are continuing to go into Haiti”.

An estimated 1.6 million people in Haiti face emergency-level food insecurity.