UN warns gangs consuming Haiti despite help for police
CTV
The UN's special envoy to Haiti warned Wednesday that the ongoing training and resources the international community is providing to Haiti's national police force is not enough to fight increasingly violent gangs.
The UN's special envoy to Haiti warned Wednesday that the ongoing training and resources the international community is providing to Haiti's national police force is not enough to fight increasingly violent gangs.
Helen La Lime, head of the UN's Integrated Office in Haiti, unexpectedly joined an Organization of American States meeting in Washington, D.C., saying it's time to look at new partnerships as she called once again for the deployment of a specialized foreign force.
“We're not getting the job done,” she said. “We need to get down to the business of building this country back.”
Powerful gangs have been infiltrating once peaceful communities in the Haitian capital and beyond, with experts estimating that they now control about 60 per cent of Port-au-Prince. They have pillaged neighborhoods, raped adults and children and kidnapped hundreds of victims ranging from U.S. missionaries to a hot dog street vendor in a bid to control more territory, with violence worsening since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise.
“It is urgent for the OAS to understand that the worsening security situation on the ground has reached its peak, and armed gangs now roam the country unfettered,” said Victor Geneus, Haiti's foreign affairs minister.
Top Haitian officials including Geneus and Prime Minister Ariel Henry have repeatedly sought international boots on the ground, a request first made in October that has gone unheeded by the UN's Security Council, which has instead implemented sanctions, as have the U.S. and Canada.
On Wednesday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters the sanctions have targeted “elite families in Haiti who are so responsible not just for funding gangs, but for destabilizing the political world and their economy in Haiti at the terrible cost for the Haitian people.”
