Russia and China oppose changing the Kenya-led force in Haiti to a UN peacekeeping mission

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Russia and China on Wednesday opposed a U.S.-led campaign to transform the Kenya-led multinational force in Haiti helping police to tackle escalating gang violence into a U.N. peacekeeping mission.

The two allies called a U.N. Security Council meeting as gangs have intensified attacks, shooting at four aircraft which has shut the airport in the capital Port-au-Prince, and a ttacking its upscale neighborhood Petionville on Tuesday. The U.N. estimates the gangs control 85% of the capital and have spread into surrounding areas.

The United States proposed a U.N. peacekeeping mission in early September as one way to secure regular financing for the U.N.-backed multinational force, which faces a serious funding crisis.

The U.S. tried to get the 15-member U.N. Security Council to sign off on a draft resolution last week to start the transformation. But Russia and China refused to discuss the resolution and instead called for Wednesday’s council meeting where they made their opposition clear.

China’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Geng Shuang said the council extended the mandate of the multinational force only a month ago, and discussing its transformation to a peacekeeping operation now “will only interfere” and make it harder to tackle its funding shortfall and get all the police pledged to Haiti.

Peacekeepers should only be deployed when there is peace to keep, and there is no peace in Haiti, Geng stressed. “Deploying a peacekeeping operation at this time is nothing more than putting peacekeepers into the front line of the battles with gangs.”

The multinational force was supposed to have 2,500 international police but the head of the U.N.’s political mission in Haiti, Maria Isabel Salvador, told the council late last month that only around 430 are deployed — some 400 from Kenya and the rest from the Bahamas, Belize and Jamaica.

She said the U.N. trust fund that finances the multinational force and relies on voluntary contributions, “remains critically under-resourced." By last week, the trust fund had received $85.3 million of the $96.8 million pledged. The U.S. agreed to contribute $300 million to the force, but that total is still far below the $600 million cost to deploy a 2,500-strong force for a year.

Russia’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyansky, expressing “shock and horror” at what’s happening on the streets of Port-au-Prince, accused the U.S. and other countries that initially supported the multinational force of failing to fund it.

“Conditions on the ground in Haiti are not appropriate for U.N. peacekeepers,” he said. “Their role is to maintain peace and not to fight crime in urban areas or to save a dysfunctional state that has been plunged into domestic conflict.”

Whatever the future international presence in Haiti, Polyansky said Haitians need urgent assistance immediately which means providing the multinational force with the necessary materiel, funding and technical expertise. “Otherwise, quite simply, there will be just nobody left to host any future peacekeepers,” he said.

Haiti’s leaders have asked for a U.N. peacekeeping force, and the permanent council of the Organization of American States adopted a resolution on Nov. 13 entitled “In Support of Haiti’s Request for a United States Peacekeeping Operation.”

At the council meeting, there was also strong support for the transformation.

Monica Juma, national security adviser to Kenya’s president, told the council that joint operations by the multinational force and the Haitian police have secured critical infrastructure including the police academy, national palace, national hospital and port.

But it's evident the multinational force urgently needs “a surge,” she said, and Kenya looks forward to additional deployments in the shortest possible time along with contributions of equipment and logistical support.

At the same time, Juma said, Kenya “strongly supports” the Haitian government’s appeal to the Security Council to authorize planning for the transformation of the multinational force to a U.N. peacekeeping force.

U.S. deputy ambassador Dorothy Shea told the council that with Haitian, regional and Kenyan support, “it is time for the Security Council to act to take the initial steps to realize Haiti’s request to help reestablish security for the people of Haiti.”

Transitioning to a U.N. peacekeeping mission, she said, would facilitate the multinational force and the countries supporting it “to take advantage of existing U.N. financial, personnel, and logistical support structures as well as predictable and sustainable financing.”

The most poignant appeal for a peacekeeping force came from Haitian Dr. Bill Pape, who left Port-au-Prince about two weeks ago where he works to combat infectious and chronic diseases. He is also a professor at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York.

Pape said he came with a message to the Security Council: The Haitian police and multinational force “are outgunned and outnumbered.”

He said he recognized the controversies of previous peacekeeping missions in Haiti. The most recent, from 2004-2017, was marred by allegations of sexual assault and the introduction of cholera, which killed nearly 10,000 people.

But Pape stressed that during previous foreign interventions, which date to the early 1900s, “insecurity did not exist at this scale.”

“I trust that seeking your support to restore security in my country is not asking too much,” he told council members. “It is a difficult task for any Haitian to request foreign troops on our soil. But there is no alternative.”