Haiti

An extra 600 Kenyan police officers set to join a U.N.-backed mission to try to quell rampant gang violence in Haiti will be ready for deployment in early November, Kenya's police chief said Saturday.

Haiti's transition government said members of the Gran Grif gang perpetrated the attack in the town of Pont Sonde in the Artibonite department. A report in the Haiti Gazette said the gang was trying to extort money from the local population and they resisted paying it. The massacre was retribution. 

The UN Security Council on Monday re-authorized the deployment of the Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission to Haiti for 12 months. … In a unanimous vote on resolution 2751, the 15-member Council urged the MSS mission to speed up its deployment and called on all nations to provide additional voluntary contributions and support.

At least 3,661 people have been killed in Haiti since January due to rampant gang violence, “maintaining the high levels of violence seen in 2023,” the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said in a report issued on Friday. 

Kenyan Prime Minister William Ruto has pledged to send another 600 police officers to Haiti in the coming weeks, despite concerns that their UN-approved mission to rein in rampant gangs has been largely ineffective so far.

Haiti's government on Wednesday created a provisional electoral council long sought by the international community to prepare the troubled Caribbean country for its first general elections since 2016. … The previous electoral council had been dissolved in September 2021 by former Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who accused it of being "partisan."

Without more funding, the police force won’t be able to stem gang violence, and elections will likely be delayed.

More work needs to be done to bolster support for Haiti’s police force as gang violence continues to rock Haiti, said Bob Rae, Canada’s Ambassador to the UN and the newly elected president of the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), who just returned from visiting Port-au-Prince.

Haiti has expanded its state of emergency to cover the entire nation's territory, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Garry Conille said on Wednesday, as the Caribbean country battles violent gangs that have taken over much of the capital and started expanding into nearby regions.

During a trip to Haiti on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced $45 million in new humanitarian aid for the Caribbean nation, which has been wracked by violence for years. He also called for the renewal of the United Nations mandate for the Multinational Security Support, or MSS, mission to combat the armed gangs that dominate much of the capital.