After months of failing to make progress against paramilitaries in Port au Prince, Nairobi plans to surge thousands of armed Kenyans into Haiti over the next four months. Kenya is planning to deploy 2,500 soldiers, officially dubbed police, to Haiti in a US-backed operation.
During his speech to the UN General Assembly on Thursday, Kenyan President William Ruto laid out his plan to surge troops into Haiti. He explained that 600 armed Kenyan police will arrive in Haiti within the coming weeks, bringing the total to 1,000. By January 2025, Ruto expects the number to reach 2,500.
“Our next batch, an additional 600, is undergoing redeployment training. We will be mission-ready in a few weeks’ time and look forward to the requisite support to enable their deployment,” he said. “I must emphasize, … that Kenya will deploy the additional contingent towards attaining the target of all the 2,500 police officers by January next year.”
Ruto said a lack of funding, training, and equipment is slowing the deployment of more troops to Haiti. The US is the main backer of the operations and initially pushed for an international force deployment to Port au Prince. Washington hoped to restore the US-backed government’s rule in Haiti. This occurred in 2021 after a large number of Haitian migrants’ arrived in the US.
Washington struggled for years to find a country willing to send its soldiers to Haiti. Kenya agreed after the US offered to fund, train, and equip the Kenyan soldiers. Washington also signed a new defense cooperation agreement with Nairobi and made Kenya a Major Non-NATO ally, a status that gives Kenya access to advanced US training and weapons.
Nairobi began sending its soldiers to Port au Prince earlier this year. So far, those forces have failed to restore power to the Haitian government.
The struggles of the Kenyan force have caused Port au Prince, Nairobi, and Washington to support changing the status of the mission from a policing operation to an official UN peacekeeping mission.
While the Kenyan forces could receive a boost in UN support if named official Peacekeepers, it could also cause more tensions with the Haitians. UN Peacekeepers have a dark legacy in Haiti, including committing mass sexual abuse against Haitian women and causing a cholera outbreak that killed 10,000.
