Haiti

(Quelle: The Independent) International forces in Haiti are to be bolstered by hundreds of extra troops following an admission by the UN's top peacekeeping official that the soldiers it has are not sufficiently trained and equipped. The move comes amid mounting evidence that UN forces may have recently killed up to two dozen civilians. Jean-Marie Guehenno, the under-secretary general for peacekeeping, on Thursday told the UN Security Council in New York that forces in Haiti were not trained for carrying out raids and targeting criminal gangs.

(Quelle: Dallas Morning News) The U.N. mission to Haiti said it will receive 750 more peacekeeping troops to help control the violence that threatens to undermine fall elections. The new troops from Jordan will arrive in coming months and will be serve as temporary reinforcement to the multinational contingent of 6,200 troops and 1,400 police trying to stabilize the country, U.N. spokesman Damian Onses-Cardona said Thursday.

(Quelle: UN News) With the security situation in parts of Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, remaining very tense, the United Nations peacekeeping mission has taken a robust posture to disrupt the activities of armed gangs and bring them to justice, while taking all possible measures to reduce the risk of civilian casualties.

(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.