A Thousand Kenyan Police are Headed to Haiti Where "Gangs Rule"

A Thousand Kenyan Police are Headed to Haiti Where “Gangs Rule”

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI – SEPTEMBER 12: Displaced women and children shelter in a school gymnasium after fleeing their homes during gang attacks on September 12, 2023 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Since mid-2023 schools, churches, and sports halls have been improvised as emergency shelters to house the sudden influx of displaced residents driven out of their homes by a surge of gang violence. As a Kenyan-led international force gets ready to help the Haitian police, Port-au-Prince and other territories are controlled by armed groups amid a gang violence surge that, according to UNICEF, has led to nearly 200,000 people displaced across the country and 130,000 in Port-au-Prince alone. (Photo by Giles Clarke/Getty Images)

Posted: February 6th, 2024

SUBSCRIBER+REPORTING — After a long wait and amid a rapidly deteriorating security situation, Haiti may soon be getting an international security force. Officials in Kenya, which is supplying 1,000 police officers for the mission, have pledged to go forward despite a series of challenges from the Kenyan legal system.

The Haiti mission is aimed at stemming a staggering level of gang violence in the western hemisphere’s poorest nation. It’s a deployment both desperately needed and deeply controversial – inside Haiti and beyond – and last week, Kenya’s President William Ruto said the police officers are traveling to Haiti, on what he has called “a mission for humanity.”

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