Mission to nowhere? How Kenya-led Haiti peacekeeping was jinxed from the start

A January 5, 2025 decree that the United States had frozen further funding to the Kenya-led Haiti peacekeeping mission did not come as a surprise as the Donald Trump 2.0 administration has signed numerous executive orders clipping multiple overseas aid programmes.

On October 13, 2023, in response to a United Nations Security Council resolution, Kenya’s National Security Council and the Cabinet approved the deployment of police officers to Haiti. The decision was unanimously endorsed by parliament on November 16, 2023.

This, however, did not rest well with a number of Kenyans as they felt that the Kenya Police were punching beyond their competence. Another cohort was of the opinion that Haiti, being a non-regional or African country was really not Kenya’s business.

International observers had their own set of concerns including reported human rights violations by the Kenyan police - not a desirable record for this kind of outing.

In a seemingly hasty and reckless move to deploy in Haiti, the government of Kenya ignored certain basic protocols and obligations under international peacekeeping and security protocols as well as constitutional provisions. A public participation and perception; and other available alternatives, which should have been resolved ahead of the announcement.

A number of people were dissatisfied, and soon filed suits against the police deployment to Haiti in court.

One of the suits, filed by Kenyan lawyer and politician Ekuru Aukot of the Thirdway Alliance party, stated that the deployment would violate the constitution, which provides for the deployment of the military abroad, but does not include the police. 

Similar suits were presented in court opposing the deployment and on January 26, 2024, the High Court blocked President William Ruto from sending personnel to Haiti.

The judge explained that Kenyan law only allows the government to deploy police officers to another country if a reciprocal agreement exists between Kenya and the host nation. The government of Kenya appealed the ruling.

The court’s decision threatened to scuttle the whole mission but the executive found a way round the hitch by calling over the Haitian Prime Minister, Ariel Henri to Nairobi to sign an agreement, an international legal instrument, that would remove legal obstacles from actualizing the deployment.

Prime Minister Ariel Henri then left Nairobi for Haiti but was deposed from power and did not make it back to Haiti. Ariel was swiftly replaced by Garry Conille as the interim Prime Minister.

Over 80% of Haiti’s capital city, Port-au-Prince, soon fell to organized gangs who control everything including the main airport.

On June 25, 2024, the first contingent of four hundred Kenya Police officers arrived in Haiti, marking the beginning of a United Nations-backed mission to combat powerful armed gangs that have wreaked terror and violence in the Caribbean nation.

Welcoming the first contingent, the interim leader, Mr. Conille vowed to end lawlessness with the help of the Kenyan-led international force deployed to the Caribbean nation.

Other countries that pledged forces or financial support for the Haiti mission include Benin, Jamaica, The Bahamas, Belize, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Bangladesh, Algeria, Canada, France, Germany, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Spain.

The immediate former US President Joe Biden commended and thanked all the countries that had pledged personnel and financial support to the mission noting that the US had provided $360M in support of the mission.

On August 13, 2024, a High Court sitting in Nairobi, once more, extended orders blocking the deployment of police officers to Haiti, on the same day that parliament approved a government request to send 1,000 policemen to the Caribbean nation to help deal with gang violence.

In 1804, Haiti became the world’s first Black republic. But it began on wrong footing when despite independence, it was forced to pay billions to France in order to secure its freedom. The perennial debt crippled Haiti economically.

Mix this with decades long dictatorships, natural disasters, political and environmental mismanagement, a long US military occupation, and a debilitating US trade embargo, all these contributed to its recent turmoil.

However, things took a turn for the worse since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in office in 2021. His death, at the hands of mercenaries, whose goal and masters remain unknown to date, made a bad situation, worse. 

Haiti has not held elections since 2019, not to mention that the country has been in a fragile state since the 2010 earthquake that killed up to 300,000 people.

A previous UN mission, which began from 2004 to 2017, was a big failure and the blue helmets reputation in Haiti was tarnished by allegations of sexual assault and being the cause of a cholera outbreak that killed an estimated 10,000 people.

In the intervening years, however, violent extremist gangs have increased their influence, filling the power vacuum left by Haitian government especially in far flung suburbs of the cities. Gang violence has over the years displaced well over a half a million people from their homes, and about half of the country’s population of 11.5M suffer from severe hunger.

The Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission in Haiti is a non-UN mission authorized by the UN Security Council in October 2023.

A year after the mission was approved, member states of the United Nations began a push to compel the Security Council to turn the Haiti mission to a UN peacekeeping mission.

In September 2024, The United States had suggested a proposal to the United Nations (UN) to transform the peacekeeping mission in early September as one way to secure regular financing for the U.N.-backed multinational force, which faces a serious funding crisis.

The U.S. tried to get the 15-member U.N. Security Council to sign off on a draft resolution in late 2024 to start the transformation. But Russia and China refused to discuss the resolution and instead called for a full council meeting where they made their opposition clear.

The U.N.’s political mission boss in Haiti, Maria Isabel Salvador told the UN security council in late 2024 that only 430 security personnel were deployed, 400 from Kenya and the rest from the Bahamas, Belize and Jamaica.

She said the U.N. trust fund that finances the multinational force and relies on voluntary contributions, “remains critically under-resourced.”

On November 21, 2024, Russia and China vehemently opposed a U.S.-led campaign to transform the Kenya-led multinational force in Haiti which is helping police to tackle escalating gang violence into a U.N. peacekeeping mission.

In late 2024, the trust fund received $85.3 million of the $96.8 million pledged. The U.S. had agreed to contribute $300 million to the force, but that total was still far below the $600 million cost to deploy a 2,500-strong force for a year.

In opposing the deployment of UN peacekeepers in Haiti, China’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Geng Shuang said that “peacekeepers should only be deployed when there is peace to keep”, and “there is no peace in Haiti.” Geng went on further to say “Deploying a peacekeeping operation at this time is nothing more than putting peacekeepers into the front line of the battles with gangs.”

The announcement by US to freeze funding for the Haiti mission raised debate in Kenya, with concerns that the order by President Donald Trump would render the mission cash-strapped.

However, top officials within the Kenya government have sought to allay fears that the US funding freeze could spell the doom for the Haiti Stabilization force.

Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi and the Government Spokesperson Isaac Mwaura were equivocal that the operations of the Kenya-led multinational security support mission in Haiti will not be jeopardised after the US freezes its financial contributions to the United Nations fund.

The move, which stops $13.3 million in pending aid, will hopefully see other donors step in to fill the gap left by the US.

At the same time, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Korir Sing’oei also issued a statement on the social media platform X, where he reiterated that the UN Trust Fund for Haiti will fund the mission, and not the US. 

Sing’oei said police deployment has come from not just Kenya, but also Guetemala, Jamaica, El Salvador, Bahamas, and Belize among others which is true. However, the Kenyan contingent is the biggest by far.

Sing’oei further said that at the end of 2024, US$110.3 million had been pledged by several countries including the USA, Canada, France, Turkey, Spain, Italy and Algeria. $85 million had been received by the Trust Fund including substantial amounts from the United States.

While undisbursed US contribution to the Trust Fund of $15 million has been paused as per presidential directive, the Fund has sufficient resources to continue underwriting the Mission until end of September 2025.

This contrasts to what the U.N.’s political mission boss in Haiti, Maria Isabel Salvador told the UN security council in late 2024 on which she stated that the UN Trust Fund was suffering from “critical underfunding.”

Unless the nations that gave pledges honor their part and fresh funding gets through, the reality is that the Haiti Stabilization force might run into unprecedented headwinds which could well jeopardize the entire mission and leave Haiti at a worse standing than when the Kenya police went in.

However, some question still linger on, how would Kenya lead a stabilization force in Haiti, over 12,000 miles in the Caribbean peninsula, yet the United States which is literally next door, with a top-notch military force and a professional police, coyly stand aside as former President Biden urged Kenya to go ahead in Haiti?

While the UN keeps urging the international community to send their security forces to Haiti, a long and controversial history of foreign interventions in the Caribbean nation has caused critics to question the initiative. Those doubts have been exacerbated by a lack of concrete details regarding the goals and actions of the latest stabilization mission.