U.N. approves militarized force to take on Haiti’s gangs

The MSS “managed to prevent the complete collapse of the Haitian state in the face of this onslaught of terrorist gang violence,” Michael Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the Security Council after the vote. “However, it was a mission that unfortunately lacked the resources to fully turn the tide. … Today’s vote sets that right.”

Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, was skeptical. Stability would not come to Haiti, he warned, unless efforts were made to stem the flow of illegal firearms to the country — much of them from the United States — and strengthen its institutions.

“The tools of international assistance to Haiti pushed through the council have failed to produce any sustainable results,” he said, “and we have every reason to believe that this new mission under yet another grand title will meet the same fate.”

He called the deployment a “dangerous and poorly thought-out venture,” but given the Haitian government’s support of the new force, he said, Russia would not block it.

Haiti is “a modern-day Guernica,” Laurent Saint-Cyr told the U.N. General Assembly last week, “a human tragedy at the doorstep of America.” Saint-Cyr leads the council that’s overseeing the government in the absence of a president (the last one was assassinated in 2021) or legislature (the last senators went home in 2023 after their terms expired).

The killing of President Jovenel Moïse opened a power vacuum now largely filled by the gangs. In 2022, as security and humanitarian crises spiraled, then-Prime Minister Ariel Henry appealed for an international force to support the country’s outnumbered and outgunned police. The request was divisive, given the troubled history of foreign interventions, but the situation had grown so dire that human rights groups and many Haitians saw no alternative.

The Biden administration proposed the MSS, but it ruled out deploying U.S. personnel in frontline roles and struggled to find a country willing to lead the mission. Several nations approached by Washington declined before Kenya agreed, in keeping, officials said, with their “commitment to Pan Africanism.”

But with little success against the gangs, the MSS has lost the confidence of the Haitian government, which this year turned to foreign mercenaries to try to stem the violence, and of many Haitians, who refer to its officers as “tourists.” In the 15 months since it arrived, gangs have gained control of more territory, the number of displaced people has more than doubled, and no major gang leader has been captured or killed.

It was unclear how the new force might avoid the same obstacles. Contributions to the gang-suppression force would remain voluntary. Henry T. Wooster, the chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, told reporters last week he was “confident” that “we will gain sufficient personnel, whether they’re gendarmes, police types or military.”

“To be clear,” he said, “the mission is colored overwhelmingly as military due to the urban combat nature of it. But [we’re] also happy to take police.”

Fu Cong, China’s ambassador to the United Nations, called the resolution “ambiguous on several critical issues” and chided its sponsors, saying they failed to “provide meaningful information” before putting it to a vote.

“Over the past three decades, the Security Council has authorized three multinational force deployments and seven peacekeeping operations in Haiti only to get in return persistent instability and recurring crisis, along with resentment and grievances towards the United Nations amongst the Haitian people,” he said.

Questions remained, he added, about how to ensure that the gang-suppression force “will not repeat past mistakes” and whether “the hasty deployment of yet another multinational force [is] a responsible approach towards the Haitian people.”

Widlore Mérancourt contributed to this report.