Ruto mulls permanent Haiti peacekeeping operation

President William Ruto says he is open to Kenya's anti-gang mission in the country being converted to a full UN peacekeeping operation. Ruto has visited Haiti to assess the progress of the Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission, where Kenya is playing a leading role to curb rampant gang violence that has ushered years of political chaos and mass displacement. ‘On the suggestion to transit this into a fully UN Peacekeeping mission, we have absolutely no problem with it, if that is the direction the UN security council wants to take,’ Ruto said in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Radio France Internationale reports that Kenya has also pledged to send 600 more police officers to Haiti in the coming weeks, as expected. He met with the president of the Transitional Presidential Council, Edgard Leblanc Fils and visited the Kenyan base in Clercine, where he greeted the Kenyan police officers on duty. His visit marked 100 days of deployment of Kenyan police in Haiti, but concrete results are still to be seen. The mandate of the MSS mission was first approved by the UN Security Council last year, for 12 months, and will expire next week. The UN expert on human rights in Haiti last week said that the situation has worsened, with now about 700 000 people internally displaced. The idea of a UN peacekeeping force, first floated by the US, is also controversial in Haiti given the introduction of cholera by UN troops and several sexual abuse cases the last time they were in Haiti.

Full Radio France Internationale report