Additional $100M to halt Haiti gangs
Blinken vows funds as gang leader warns U.S.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday announced an additional $100 million to finance the deployment of a multinational force mission to Haiti following a meeting with Caribbean leaders in Jamaica to halt the country’s violent crisis.
Blinken also announced another $33 million in humanitarian aid and the creation of a joint proposal agreed on by Caribbean leaders and Haitian stakeholders that would expedite the creation of a “presidential college.”
He said the college would take “concrete steps” he did not identify to meet the needs of Haitian people and enable the pending deployment of the multinational force to be led by Kenya.
The joint proposal has the backing of members of Caricom, a regional trade bloc that held Monday’s urgent meeting.
“I think we can all agree: Haiti is on the brink of disaster,” said Guyanese President Irfaan Ali. “We must take quick and decisive action.”
He said that he is “very confident that we have found commonality” to support what he described as a Haitian-led-and-owned solution.
Meanwhile, Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness said the meeting was a work in progress.
“It is clear that Haiti is now at a tipping point,” he said. “We are deeply distressed that it is already too late for too many who have lost far too much at the hands of criminal gangs.”
Embattled Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who faces calls to resign or agree to a transitional council, did not attend the meeting. He has been locked out of his own country while traveling abroad, due to surging unrest and violence by criminal gangs who have overrun much of Haiti’s capital and closed down its main international airports.
Henry remained in Puerto Rico and was taking steps to return to Haiti once feasible, according to a brief statement from the U.S. territory’s Department of State.
While leaders met behind closed doors, Jimmy Chérizier, considered Haiti’s most powerful gang leader, told reporters that if the international community continues down the current road, “it will plunge Haiti into further chaos.”
Meanwhile, the first Haitian American Democrat elected to the U.S. House of Representatives is calling on Henry to leave his post amid the escalating gang violence.
“We have to make sure that the Haitian people trust the process and that they feel that they are being protected and that the gangs will not be involved in any kind of transition government,” U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-mccormick said Monday during a news conference in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.