Kenya should stand firm and help end Haiti gangs menace

Haiti gang leader Jimmy 'Barbecue' Cherizier. [AP photo]

As the Haiti question continues to evolve and present new nuances, Kenya, as part of the international community, must step up to the challenge and help restore law and order in Haiti, which has had a very tragic history.

From the time Toussaint L'Ouverture, a former slave, led the successful slave rebellion that ushered in modern Haiti, it has certainly been a bumpy ride. At a time when the slave trade and slaveholding were still part of the plantation agriculture in the West, Haiti's contemporaries effectively cut her economically at the knee. France, for instance, forced Haiti to pay her astronomical amount of money as compensation to slaveholders who lost their 'properties'.