Haiti

Criminal gangs have tightened their grip on much of Port-au-Prince, with the multinational security mission making little headway and transitional authorities mired in internal disputes. The UN Security Council should quickly decide how to respond to Haiti’s request for further assistance in restoring public safety.

The U.S. has notified the United Nations that it is freezing some funding to a U.N.-backed mission in Haiti tasked with fighting gangs trying to seize full control of the country’s capital, the U.N. said Tuesday. The U.S. has been the biggest contributor to the mission led by Kenyan police, which was launched last year and is struggling with a lack of funding and personnel. The change in funding will have an “immediate impact,” U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said.

French President Emmanuel Macron has asked the United Nations to consider sending a peacekeeping force to Haiti. The suggestion was made in a letter Macron sent to the U.N. after meeting with Leslie Voltaire, resident of Haiti's Transitional Presidential Council at the Elysee Palace in Paris. 

Haiti's capital could become overrun by criminal gangs if the international community does not step up aid to a United Nations-backed security mission there, U.N. chief Antonio Guterres warned in a report Wednesday. More money, equipment and personnel are needed for the Kenya-led international force, Guterres said, adding that any further delays risk the "catastrophic" collapse of Haiti's security institutions … .

Haiti is showing signs of progress on the political front despite serious setbacks in terms of security, the Special Representative and Head of the UN office in the country, BINUH, told the Security Council on Wednesday. 

Kenya sent more than 200 police officers to Haiti on Saturday, providing backup to an understaffed security mission in the Caribbean country where rampant gang violence has displaced more than a million people. Some 10 countries have together pledged over 3,100 troops for Haiti as part of a U.N.-backed anti-gang force, but few have so far deployed.

Surging gang violence in Haiti has caused a threefold rise in the number of people uprooted from their homes in a year, the UN migration agency, IOM, said on Tuesday, in a call for “sustained humanitarian assistance right now to save and protect lives”.

At least 5,601 people were killed in gang violence in Haiti last year, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Tuesday, appealing for greater efforts by the authorities and the international community to address the root causes. 

A contingent of security forces from Guatemala and El Salvador arrived in Haiti's capital Friday to reinforce a long-delayed United Nations-backed mission tasked with restoring security amid a bloody conflict with armed gangs.

The Security Council today received a briefing on its sanctions regime for Haiti and heard a call for stronger measures from the country’s representative, who reported a surge in homicides and a tripling of kidnappings this year amid arms embargo violations.