An extra 600 Kenyan police officers set to join a U.N.-backed mission to try to quell rampant gang violence in Haiti will be ready for deployment in early November, Kenya’s police chief said Saturday.
President William Ruto had pledged the additional officers Friday following a meeting with Haiti’s interim Prime Minister Garry Conille, as the two leaders appealed for the international community to do more.
“A contingent of 600 officers will soon join the Kenyan police already stationed in Haiti after completing pre-deployment training.” said Kenya’s Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja.
“Once this training is complete, the officers will be ready for departure early next month,” he said at a media briefing alongside Conille in Nairobi.
The East African country is leading the multinational mission aimed at tackling spiraling insecurity in the crime-ravaged Caribbean nation and has so far sent 400 police.
Addressing concerns about delays in paying the salaries of officers already in Haiti, Kanja said, “The payment issue has been sorted out, and the officers are happy.”
On Friday, Ruto had urged the international community to “urgently” rally behind the mission, which has been hobbled by a chronic lack of funding.
“This is the moment to provide that critical support for us to be able to undertake the exercise at hand,” he said in a call echoed by Conille.
The Haitian leader’s visit to Kenya comes a week after gang members opened fire in the Haitian town of Ponte Sonde, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the capital Port-au-Prince, butchering 109 people and wounding around 40 more.
The U.N. Security Council last month extended the policing mission for one year, without transforming it into a U.N. peacekeeping mission as floated by Port-au-Prince.
More than 3,600 people have been killed this year in “senseless” gang violence in Haiti, according to the U.N. human rights office.
