The United States President Donald Trump's administration has commended the Kenyan police who are part of the Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission in Haiti for their efforts in preventing gang violence in the Caribbean nation.
Addressing the press on Friday, August 22, the US Ambassador in Haiti, Henry Wooster, expressed satisfaction with Kenya's leadership and participation in the anti-gang mission.
According to Wooster, the Kenyan police in Haiti performed excellently by fulfilling their mandate, and their role in the mission was key in ending the continuous violence in Haiti.
"The Kenyans have done everything we have asked them to do, everything we have asked them to do," Woofer said during a presser with the Haitian journalists.
During the presser, Woofer also explained the US government's intention to double the number of troops in Haiti and the plans to strip Kenya of its leading role in the MSS mission.
He revealed underway plans to alter the mission and increase resources and personnel to make the anti-gang operations more effective.
"We want to take this force, the MSS, and we want to alter it so that it's better able. We want it to have all the assets, we want it to have the authorities, we want it to have the personnel and the equipment to do what's necessary here," Wooper said.
"And so we want to make sure that those corrections, those recalibrations, now after one year of the deployment, are made so that that force can be truly aligned and the resources it has with the challenge that it is facing," he added.
Wooper's remarks come hardly two days after the US Deputy Chief of Mission Kimberly Penland revealed that the US is drafting a resolution to present to the United Nations Security Council to make changes to the Haiti mission.
The proposal endorses another proposal by the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, which calls for the provision of logistical and operational support using peacekeeping money, which would also come with other changes if adopted.
“Should the U.N. Security Council pursue this model, then we will also seek robust regional participation to provide strategic leadership of the force,” Penland told the Security Council.
Meanwhile, the proposed changes come amidst soaring gang violence in Haiti that has left thousands of people dead and others displaced.
