Kenya: High Court rules against sending police to Haiti

CMC (Kenya) – The High Court Friday ruled against a government plan to deploy hundreds of police to Haiti at the head of a United Nations-backed multinational mission to fight escalating gang violence in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country.

Justice Enock Chacha Mwita said that “any decision by any state organ or state officer to deploy police officers to Haiti…contravenes the constitution and the law and is therefore unconstitutional, illegal and invalid.”

“An order is hereby issued prohibiting deployment of police forces to Haiti or any other country,” he added.

The government had described the deployment as a “mission for humanity” after the UN Security Council last October had given the green light for the mission, which has faced criticism here and a legal challenge filed at the Nairobi High Court last year by the opposition Thirdway Alliance.

Constitutional lawyers and opposition parliamentarians had been critical of the way the government secured international approval for the mission before it obtained parliament’s backing.

In its ruling, the High Court said that parliamentary approval was only required for military, and not police deployments. But it said for officers to be deployed, there needed to be a reciprocal arrangement with the host government, which the petitioners had argued, with no contest from the government, was not currently in place.

On Thursday, Haiti’s Foreign Minister, Jean Victor Généus, had pleaded for the deployment to be speeded up, telling the UN Security Council that violence in the country was as barbaric as in a war zone.

The United Nations Special Representative to Haiti, Maria Isabel Salvador, also told the UN Security Council that the crisis in Haiti had reached “a critical point”.

“I cannot over stress the severity of the situation in Haiti, where multiple protracted crises have reached a critical point,” said Salvador in presenting the latest report of the UN Political Office in Haiti, known by the French acronym as BINUH.

She said more than 8,400 people were victims of gang violence in Haiti last year, including killings, injuries and kidnappings, a 122 per cent increase over 2022.

Salvador said the impoverished Caribbean country remains plagued by mounting violence and insecurity at the hands of armed gangs “against a backdrop of political, humanitarian and socioeconomic challenges”.

Haiti has seen years of declining security due to raging gang violence, with its political, economic and public health systems also in tatters. The country has been without a president since the incumbent, Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July 2021.

Earlier this week, the United Nations reported that 5,000 homicides were recorded in Haiti last year, more than double that in 2022.

“I am appalled by the staggering and worsening level of gang violence devastating the lives of Haitians, in particular in Port-au-Prince,” said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in the report, adding “gang killings, kidnappings and sexual violence, notably against women and young girls, among other abuses, continue with widespread impunity”.

The UN report said that one in 10 police stations nationwide had been attacked through the year, while many of the police’s armored vehicles were left inoperable after clashes with gang members, who often donned fake police uniforms to carry out kidnappings.

Several Caribbean countries, including Jamaica, the Bahamas and Belize, had indicated a willingness to be part of the UN-backed mission and the Minister of State in the Ministry of National Defense in Belize Oscar Mira, said an official decision has not yet been made and that Belmopan is waiting for directives from its CARICOM counterparts.

In the meantime, a group of soldiers from the Canadian Armed Forces are in Belize preparing the soldiers to be deployed in Haiti.

“The Belize Defense Force is always making sure that they are ready for deployment. We are doing training. We have not sent anyone out of the country for training. The training is happening in Belize. We have Canadian Forces here in the country who are giving us that training.”

“At the beginning we have a list of 50 personnel. We will train more so that we have a poll of BDF officers who can be deployed to Haiti. But that training is happening here in Haiti. There has not been a decision as yet as to deployment to Haiti.”

“CARICOM is still looking and still deciding when will be the best. We want to ensure that our soldiers are well prepared, that the soldiers that are deployed are well trained and have everything they need before they are deployed. A decision has not been made as yet,” Mira added.

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