The president of Kenya, William Rutosaid goodbye this Monday in an official ceremony in Nairobi to some 400 agents of police before his imminent departure to Haiti to lead the multinational mission authorized by the United Nations Security Council to achieve peace in the Caribbean nation.
“Kenya has strong credentials in peacemaking and conflict resolution. The presence of our police officers in Haiti will provide relief to women, men and children whose lives have been destroyed by the violence of armed gangs,” Ruto said through the social network X.
“We will work with the international community to achieve lasting stability in Haiti,” he added.
The ceremony took place at the Administrative Police Training School, before a deployment expected to take place in the coming hours, despite orders from the Kenyan Justice prohibiting it.
The agents, who are part of the total 1,000 police officers Kenya offered to lead the missioncome from various police units and have received training in different areas, including languages.
The event took place after Ruto held talks last week with the Haitian Presidential Transition Council (CPT), whose establishment, which finally occurred last April, was a necessary condition for Kenya before sending the agents.
Likewise, the inspector general of the National Police Service (NPS) of Kenya, Japhet Koome, met in Nairobi on the 18th with a delegation of the Haitian Police, just a few weeks after a Kenyan reconnaissance team returned from the Caribbean country .
After today’s event, it seems that in a few hours Ruto’s commitment to lead the multinational mission could materialize despite the judicial obstacles that the deployment has encountered in the Kenyan courts.
Thus, the Nairobi High Court set a hearing on a new appeal by a Kenyan opposition party against the deployment of the first agents to Haiti on October 7 for next October 7.
The formation Thirdway Alliance (Third Way Alliance) and its leader, lawyer Ekuru Aukot, already presented a first appeal last October against the deployment that led the judges to temporarily block it, before the aforementioned court prohibited the mobilization on January 26.
The court then considered that the Kenyan National Security Council – made up of the president, the vice president, the head of the Army, the director general of the Intelligence Services and the inspector general of the Police, among others – did not have the power to order police officers abroad and could only do so if there was a “reciprocal agreement” with the host government.
The authorities of Kenya and Haiti tried to overcome that obstacle on March 1, when Ruto and the now former Haitian prime minister, Ariel Henrywitnessed the signing of a bilateral pact in Nairobi.
But Aukot and his party have argued that this agreement is invalid because not only was it not published in the Official Gazette of the Kenyan State, but it was also not signed by a president democratically elected by Haitians nor was a formal petition presented to Kenya.
In October 2023, the UN Security Council authorized the sending of a support mission to the Haitian National Police, in response to the request made a year earlier by the authorities of the Caribbean country to eradicate violence by armed gangs.
This violence caused 8,000 deaths in Haiti last year, and these criminal organizations have come to control 80% of the capital, Port-au-Prince, as well as other areas of the country, according to UN figures.
(With information from EFE)
