
The Kenya-led security support mission to Haiti is, at present, unfit for purpose, experts say. More than six months after deploying to help police wrest back control, rampant gangs have gained more territory and power while access to vital humanitarian aid for desperate civilians has dwindled.
But how come, and what next?
A months-long investigation reveals that a large part of the failure is down to the mission’s lack of resources, but also that it was arguably mission impossible from the get-go.
The Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission was approved by the UN Security Council in October 2023 – more than two years after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse sent the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, spiralling downwards into new levels of lawlessness.
It then took the best part of a year for the United States, the main financial backer of the venture, to secure Kenyan leadership of the mission and push things forward – given little apparent appetite from international partners and considerable opposition in Kenya and Haiti.
The mission was initially slated to be composed of 2,500 officers and soldiers, but the 400 Kenyan police deployed in late June 2024 have largely been left alone to help the outmanned and outgunned Haitian National Police (PNH) combat heavily armed gangs who know the streets of the capital well and control nearly all of them.
A new batch of 150 Guatemalan military police officers landed in Port-au-Prince in early January, but most countries that pledged support to the MSS mission have failed to follow through. While nearly 590 foreign security force personnel are now deployed in the Caribbean nation, the mission remains severely underfunded and ill-equipped.
“I heard there were Kenyans in the country, but where are they? Why are they in Haiti if we don’t see any difference?”
Hopes of restoring some semblance of governance are also fading: The Transitional Presidential Council created in April 2024 to pave the way for the country’s first elections since 2016 has failed to advance its agenda due to near-constant political infighting. For millions of Haitians affected by the violence, daily life has simply gone from bad to worse.
“Since the mission’s arrival, gangs have taken several villages and at least seven key towns that had been spared,” said Himmler Rébu, a retired Haitian army colonel and former presidential candidate. “We’ve had massacres; thousands of families have been displaced.”
In 2024, at least 5,600 people were killed in Haiti due to gang violence – about 1,000 more than in 2023 – and 2,212 were injured, according to the UN.
Last year, the number of displaced people surged to nearly 703,000 (6 per cent of Haiti’s overall population of 11.5 million), with 25 per cent of them living in makeshift camps, where they are exposed to infectious diseases, and where women and girls are especially vulnerable to sexual violence.
In 39 per cent of those sites, the displaced have no access to drinking water and receive no humanitarian assistance, according to a new report by the National Human Rights Defence Network in Haiti (RNDDH). About 1.5 million children have also lost access to education – many of them end up being recruited by gangs.
Access for those trying to deliver humanitarian aid is increasingly difficult. Even better-off neighbourhoods considered safe not so long ago are now being targeted by gangs. Hospitals and health centres are also increasingly coming under attack.
“The bandits came and showed no mercy,” Eliamise Jean, a 32-year-old resident of the Solino neighbourhood, said. “A woman in her thirties and another – eight months pregnant – were shot dead in my area. Many houses and cars were looted and burned.”
Jean now lives in a displacement camp with the youngest of her three children. She said she has seen no difference since the Kenyans landed. “I heard there were Kenyans in the country, but where are they?” she asked. “Why are they in Haiti if we don’t see any difference?”
The MSS deployment faced plenty of scepticism from the get-go. There were doubts about the funding, the mission’s mandate, and the suitability of the Kenyan police force to lead it, especially given that most officers don’t speak French, let alone Haitian Creole.
A judge in the East African country initially halted the deployment, ruling that it was “unconstitutional”, but President William Ruto bypassed the court order by signing a direct agreement with Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry in Nairobi on March 1, 2024.
While Henry was in Kenya, the Viv Ansanm (Living Together) gang coalition launched a coordinated assault on police stations, prisons and the international airport. With the airport under siege, Henry was unable to return, and on March 11, he announced his resignation, which led the following month to the setting up of the Transitional Presidential Council.
A wide range of security experts, policymakers and key Haitian observers were interviewed for this story. Almost all noted that the Kenyan police have been placed in an untenable position.
“This type of intervention has been tried since 1935,” said George Musamali, a Kenyan security expert and a former senior officer in an elite Kenyan police unit. “The Americans started and left without achieving anything. The UN [MINUSTAH] was there with 17,000 strong Brazilian military officers who also left. It is a totally impossible mission.”
Wary of the lack of results, foreign governments have been reluctant to stump up the money they pledged to the mission’s trust fund. According to several sources, it now has around $100 million – far less than the $600 million needed. There are concerns that the United States, which promised $300 million, may pull back once Donald Trump takes office next week.
William O’Neill, the UN’s top expert on human rights in Haiti, described it as something of a Catch-22 situation. “Until the mission shows success, countries are reluctant to commit more,” he said. “But without more personnel on the ground, success is impossible, and you’re not going to have more people sent until there is some money. It’s a terrible dynamic.”
Even Kenya is yet to deploy an additional 600 pledged officers to Haiti. They have finished their training, and Ruto had initially said they would travel by the end of November, but that deadline has long passed and they are still in Nairobi.
Benin, which had offered the largest contingent of up to 2,000 soldiers, put its deployment on hold last September, arguing that Haiti’s situation demanded a military solution and that its soldiers would not take orders from a police force.
Meanwhile, six Bahamian military officers sent to Port-au-Prince as an advance team (ahead of the deployment of 150 more) received an authorisation for voluntary withdrawal from their government, meaning they can leave if they feel unsafe.
“No one is going to be put in harm’s way,” the Bahamian foreign minister said. The government of Barbados also disengaged from its commitment to send troops, and announced earlier this month that it would limit its support to technical assistance.
Maria Isabel Salvador, head of BINUH, the UN’s political mission in Haiti, says she believes the MSS was flawed from the start. Instead of being “based on demand”, it is based on “what countries offered”, she said. “The 2,500 figure came from adding up offers of certain numbers by countries, instead of really assessing actual needs, what is objectively required. Somehow, no clear diagnosis of the situation was made, so no gaps or needs were addressed.”
President Joe Biden’s administration has been pushing to transform the MSS into a formal UN peacekeeping mission to secure a proper budget and more personnel, but Russia and China have repeatedly vetoed the US request at the UN Security Council.
“The mission has run into headwinds,” said Evans Ogada, one of the Kenyan lawyers who filed the court petition to halt the deployment. “It is a wait-and-see situation for the future of the mission.”
While the gangs appear able to smuggle large amounts of heavy weaponry and ammunition into Haiti with ease – mostly from the United States – the Kenyan and Haitian police forces are short of equipment and lack both air and maritime support.
The US military has been sending dozens of MaxxPro Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles to Haiti, but several security experts revealed they weren’t really effective. “These are not tanks. They are vehicles made to transport troops, but they are used for combat and easily catch fire when gangs throw Molotov cocktails,” one expert who used to work at the Haitian Department of Defence said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
O’Neill said half of the vehicles were out of commission in October because gangs shot at their tyres, which are not made of reinforced rubber.
A member of the Haitian police’s specialised UTAG anti-gang unit said Haitian officers sometimes have to borrow weapons from other units during operations because there is so little funding.
“We conduct operations in shanty towns, where there are old constructions and threats can come from anywhere,” he said, again speaking on condition of anonymity. “We need tactical vehicles, including tanks to enter gang-controlled areas; we need ballistic helmets, bulletproof vests, ammunition in large quantities, and at least two helicopters.”
In November, in response to emailed questions, a spokesperson for the State Department confirmed that the US was continuing to provide both the Haitian police and the MSS with logistical support and equipment. This included three dozen MRAPs, material for the refurbishment of bases and MEDEVAC assistance, as well as radios, night-vision goggles, drones, computers, ammunition, and police riot response gear. But there was no mention of combat vehicles.
On the ground, the reality is that the number of police officers remains minimal compared to the size of the gangs, which continue to actively recruit from Haiti’s largely young, unemployed and desperate population.
“The [MSS] mission always arrives at the front outnumbered, and there is a huge deficit in intelligence,” said Rébu, the retired Haitian colonel. “As I see it, the Kenyans were sent to be butchered. They were lured into accepting to lead in a situation that no police force can solve.”
The Haitian police and the MSS do occasionally regain territory from gangs, but they are often forced to pull out again soon afterwards, simply allowing the armed groups to move back in.
“They can’t stay after dark because they lack forward [operating] bases,” said O’Neill.
According to Rébu, the Haitian army – reinstated in 2017 to help fight gangs – is supposed to guard the areas retaken by the police but often lacks the personnel, equipment and ammunition to hold its positions.
Clarens Renois is the general coordinator of the National Union for the Integrity and Reconciliation (UNIR) party – part of one of the coalitions that has a seat on the Transitional Presidential Council. He pointed out that while the Haitian government was tasked with creating a National Security Council to develop a strategic plan, the decree establishing it was only published in late December and for political and technical reasons it may be a long time before its members are designated.
“There is no [National] Security Council yet. The police, both Kenyan and Haitian, operate in a disjointed, patchwork manner,” he said.
Compounding these difficulties is the disappointment of the population. Some Haitians go as far as accusing Kenyan police of being “on vacation”.
“They have not yet entered the Haitian reality. They are mostly warm in their hotel and on the road to the airport,” said one young resident of Port-au-Prince whose identity is being protected for security reasons. “The situation has not improved at all with them. It has gotten worse.”
One of the deployed Kenyan police officers agreed to an interview but only if he was quoted anonymously as he wasn’t supposed to talk to the media.
“The Haitian population does not yet understand well what we are doing. They are waiting for results,” he said. “But they must understand that more than 80 per cent of the Ouest Department [around Port-au-Prince] is under gang control. This would require a massive deployment and large-scale operations, and neither the [Haitian police] nor the MSS have the means for that,” he pointed out.
- A Tell report