Kenyan President William Ruto is in the United States for a three-day state visit in the first such trip for an African leader since 2008.
When Ruto meets his counterpart Joe Biden at the White House on Thursday, at the top of their agenda will be a multinational security intervention in the troubled Caribbean nation of Haiti – a mission that Kenya is leading and Washington is backing.
While the US has refused to contribute forces to the United Nations-backed initiative, Washington has nonetheless become Kenya’s loudest supporter and the mission’s biggest funder even as Nairobi faces domestic challenges over the strategy.
The planned deployment of police to Haiti – a first for the East African country outside the continent – has sparked fierce debates in Kenya’s Parliament and in its courts.
Here’s what we know about the planned mission, how Kenya got involved and why some are fiercely against it:
Kenyan President William Ruto [File: Monicah Mwangi/Reuters]
What’s the backdrop to the Haiti crisis?
The Caribbean nation has been racked by violence in recent months after gangs declared war on the government of former Prime Minister Ariel Henry in February.
The UN says more than 2,500 people were killed or injured across the country from January to March while at least 95,000 people have fled the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Henry had pleaded with the UN Security Council last year to deploy a mission that would bolster Haiti’s fragile security forces and help clamp down on rampant gang violence. For months, the Security Council failed to find a country to step up and lead such a mission after a previous UN mission to Haiti was beset by controversies.
By mid-2023, it emerged that the US was considering backing a Nairobi-led police mission and Kenyan officials were weighing the proposal. It came as a surprise to many: Kenya has sent troops on missions inside and outside Africa, but no African country has ever led a security mission outside the continent,…
Original from www.aljazeera.com