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BELMOPAN, Belize, CMC – The Belize government is considering whether or not it will deploy more soldiers to Haiti after indicating that “there are a few outstanding issues that have to be resolved” before troops could be sent to the French-speaking Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country.
“We got a briefing in cabinet from the team, the Ministry of National Defense and Border Security team on this issue, so I think there are a few outstanding issues that have to be resolved in terms of ensuring that our soldiers are ready,” said Foreign Affairs Minister, Francis Fonseca, speaking on Love FM.
Belize had originally intended to deploy at least 50 personnel from the Belize Defence Force (BDF) and the Coast Guard, but only two soldiers are now in Haiti and this week Cabinet was briefed on the state of readiness of Belize’s troops to determine whether more will be deployed.
Fonseca told the media here that the soldiers have been in training and “so I think around the end of the month they will do another assessment around the end of January they’ll do another assessment of where they are and then they will report back to the cabinet.
“Then we’ll be able to make a more definitive decision about when, if and when they will be deployed,” he added.
Last year, 31 BDF and 20 Coast Guard sailors were trained in Jamaica by members of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF).
The Belizeans were to join the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission in Haiti that recently welcomed a second group of soldiers from Guatemala, bringing to 150, the total number of the contingent in the country.
With the arrival of the Guatemalans, the MSS, which has been sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council, now has 590 police/military personnel in the country, including six Bahamians, 24 Jamaicans and the two Belizean soldiers.
Earlier this month, the United Nations Human Rights Office reported that at least 5,601 people were killed in Haiti last year as a result of gang violence, an increase of over 1,000 on the total killings for 2023. It said a further 2,212 people were injured and 1,494 kidnapped.
Last week, Barbados defended its decision to suspend plans to send troops to Haiti. expressing concern that the environment in the country had become more dangerous,
Barbados had initially committed to the United Nations to send a contingent of the Barbados Defense Force (BDF) to Haiti as part of the MSS , but Foreign Affairs Minister, Kerrie Symmonds, said “we are mindful of this [increasing danger], and you don’t want to send people in harm’s way […] and the truth is that, it has to be a properly strategically planned activity. And we cannot safely say right now, that there has been the level of strategic planning at the global level that we would have wanted”.
