Heavily armed and hooded Haitian gang members are shown participating in a protest demanding the removal of Prime Minister Ariel Henry in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Sept. 19. The UN Security Council is voting Monday on a resolution to approve a multinational police action in Haiti to combat rampant gang crime. Photo by Johnson Sabin/EPA-EFE
Oct. 2 (UPI) — The United Nations Security Council is set Monday to vote on a long-sought resolution under which a multinational security force would be deployed to Haiti to battle violent and deadly street gangs.
The 15-member Security Council is scheduled to meet at 4 p.m. EDT in New York to vote on a draft resolution authorizing an international police intervention in the violence-plagued Caribbean island nation.
The resolution, sponsored by the United States, would give the United Nations’ blessing to a policing effort led by Kenya and backed others to stabilize the situation in Haiti, where gang-related violence has continued to escalate and to spread, exposing the island’s population to what U.N. officials call “extreme and systematic violence.”
“We hope the resolution will be approved,” Security Council President Sérgio França Danese of Brazil said in a briefing Monday before the meeting. “It’s a very important matter for all Latin American and African countries. The Caribbean countries have been very vocal about the importance they attach to this resolution.”
The Brazilian ambassador stressed that under the resolution, the policing force would not be a U.N. endeavor, but rather consist of efforts by individual countries opting to participate in the force at the request of overwhelmed Haitian authorities.
On July 29, fully 10 months after Haiti initially requested the help, Kenyan Foreign Minister Alfred Mutua announced in a statement that his country had agreed to “positively consider” leading a multinational force to Haiti.
He indicated Kenya would deploy a contingent of 1,000 police officers “to help train and assist Haitian police restore normalcy in the country and protect strategic installations.”
Subsequently, several Caribbean countries, including Jamaica, Barbados, and Antigua and Barbuda, announced they, too, would consider contributing to the force.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in August reiterated his recommendation to deploy a non-UN multinational force to Haiti and said he “welcomed” the announcements of Kenya and countries.
Danese said if Security Council members approved the measure Monday, the government of Kenya would still need to get the assent of the country’s parliament to move forward.
“This force is being considered as just one instrument to help stabilize the security situation in the country,” he said. “This is just a first step in what we hope will be the direction in terms of assuring those security considerations that will allow the political process to go forward.
“It is a condition that is necessary but, of course, not enough.”
The power and violent behavior of gangs in Haiti has been growing in recent months and UN officials say rape and other acts of sexual violence are pervasive throughout many parts of the country.
In August, the U.S. State Department urged U.S. citizens to leave Haiti as soon as possible amid the island’s deteriorating security and infrastructure.
Between October 2022 and June, close to 2,800 intentional homicides were recorded in the country, while the number of kidnappings has risen to nearly 1,500 cases, according to the UN secretary-general.
While national institutions such as the judiciary, the national police and the corrections service, have taken steps to address the situation on the ground, “they remain ill-equipped to fulfill their mandate and re-establish the rule of law,” he stated in a report to the Security Council.
Stabilizing the security situation in Haiti, he warned, “will require significant international support, not only to the national police to restore security, but also in the areas of corrections, the justice system, customs control and border management.”