Haiti

(Quelle: Reliefweb) The Philippines will dispatch 200 more soldiers for a peacekeeping mission in strife-torn Haiti, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said Tuesday. Arroyo said the additional deployment was in response to the request of United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to boost the multilateral peacekeeping mission in the Caribbean country.

(Quelle: Reliefweb) Opposition groups and residents of two Port-au-Prince slums say dozens of innocent people were killed during anti-gang raids by U.N troops and Haitian police last week, but U.N. and police officials denied the accusations. The Lawyers Committee for Individual Rights, a group known as CARLI and regarded as one of the most independent rights groups operating in Haiti, said U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police killed unarmed residents, including children and elders, in the slums of Bel-Air and Cite Soleil, strongholds of supporters of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

(Quelle: Reliefweb) Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza began Tuesday an official two-day visit to Port-au-Prince, capital of Haiti, to assess the situation in the troubled Caribbean country.

(Quelle: Reliefweb) The Summit of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Monday expressed its concern over the worsening security and increasing violence in Haiti, according to reports from Castries, capital of Saint Lucia. Ronald Venetiaan, President of Surinam and outgoing CARICOM President, said the CARICOM countries have issued a warning about the situation in Haiti. It said there is increasing political instability and deteriorating security ahead of the municipal, legislative and presidential elections in the country. Meanwhile, Venetiaan complained that the resources provided by the international community to Haiti were not enough.

(Quelle: Washington Post) United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan asked the United States this week to consider sending troops to Haiti to support a U.N. peacekeeping mission beset by mounting armed challenges to its authority, according to senior U.N. officials. Annan told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a meeting at U.N. headquarters Tuesday afternoon that he may have to ask for American 'boots on the ground' in the coming months to reinforce more than 6,500 Brazilian, Chilean, Argentine and other peacekeeping forces serving in Haiti, the officials said.

(Quelle: UN News) Wrapping up a five-day fact-finding visit to Haiti, United Nations peacekeeping chief Jean-Marie Guéhenno said the mandate the Security Council approved for the UN mission last week provided for tighter security in the Caribbean country in which several peacekeeping troops have recently been killed or wounded.

(Quelle: UN News) The United Nations Security Council today extended the mandate of its peacekeeping mission in Haiti for a further eight months and added more than 1,000 personnel, bringing it to as many as nearly 9,400 in the run-up to a newly elected government's inauguration next February.

(Quelle: Reliefweb) International Cooperation Minister Aileen Carroll and Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew today announced that Elections Canada has been selected to put in place an international mission to oversee the electoral process in Haïti. The Canadian International Development Agency is contributing up to $3.5 million to this initiative.

(Quelle: Reliefweb) U.N. peacekeepers in Haiti will crack down on violence that threatens elections this year, a U.N. official said on Thursday after a visit by a high-level contingent of foreign officials to the troubled Caribbean nation. ... A top elections official suggested last week that presidential, legislative and municipal elections scheduled for late this year should be postponed due to the violence and lagging voter registration.

(Quelle: UN News) The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti has launched a free and confidential telephone service through which Haitians can report on criminal activities to the mission's civilian police. Reports through the service, called 'Je Wè Bouch Pale,' would include human rights violations, any kind of corruption and, especially, kidnappings. They would be analyzed and transmitted to the appropriate law enforcement unit, the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) said yesterday at the launching.