Haiti has proposed setting up a bilateral agreement with Kenya despite the High Court barring 1,000 Kenyan police officers from being deployed to the Caribbean nation.
A Haitian government official who spoke to the Miami Herald, an American publication, revealed that they had asked Kenya to set up a bilateral security agreement to seal the loophole used by the court to bar the mission.
President William Ruto also offered Haiti hope after he told Reuters that he will push ahead with plans to lead a U.N.-approved security mission to the violence-prone country.
"So that mission can go ahead as soon as next week if all the paperwork is done between Kenya and Haiti on the bilateral route that has been suggested by the court."
"Haiti has actually written formally, not today, several months ago," Ruto stated on Tuesday on the sidelines of the Italian-African Summit in Italy.
Foreign Affairs PS Korir Sing'Oei added that the deployment would not be unconstitutional if conducted under a bilateral reciprocal arrangement prescribed by Sections of the Police Service Act.
If approved, the country hopes that the High Court will rule in the government's favour after President William Ruto vowed to appeal the case.
The Caribbean country expects that the agreement will lay out a clear structure on how the deployment will take place devoid of breaking any constitutional guidelines.
Additionally, Haiti would outline its responsibility in the ties to convince the court to approve the mission.
High Court Judge Chacha Mwita last week ruled that Kenya and Haiti lacked a reciprocal arrangement which would necessitate the deployment.
"It is not contested that there is no reciprocal arrangement between Kenya and Haiti and for that reason, there can be no deployment of police to that country," Mwita ruled.
The judge thus barred the National Police Service (NPS) and the National Security Council from authorising the deployment.
Notably, the ruling to halt the deployment of police officers, caused tension in Haiti as more citizens lamented that the gang felt empowered to wreak more havoc. The locals hence appealed to Ruto to continue with the deployment.
