Offer by Kenya to help Haiti is blocked

Citizens struggling amid gang violence

Gangs have taken over entire neighborhoods in Haiti’s capital, and killings have more than doubled in the past year, but for the organizers of the Port-au-Prince Jazz Festival, the show simply had to go on.

So while judges an ocean away deliberated on whether to send a contingent of officers to pacify Haiti’s violence-riddled streets, festival organizers made do by shortening the length of the event to four days from eight, moving the acts from a public stage to a restricted hotel venue, and replacing the handful of artists who canceled.

As 11.5 million Haitians struggle to feed their families and ride the bus or go to work because they fear becoming the victims of gunmen or kidnappers, they also are pushing forward, struggling to reclaim a safe sense of routine — whether or not that comes with the assistance of international soldiers.

“We need something normal,” said Miléna Sandler, the executive director of the Haiti Jazz Foundation, whose festival took place this past weekend in Port-au-Prince, the capital. “We need elections.”

A Kenyan court Friday blocked a plan to deploy 1,000 Kenyan police officers to Haiti, the key element of a multinational force meant to help stabilize a nation besieged by gang violence. Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, has sunk deeper into turmoil in the nearly three years since the president was assassinated. The terms of all mayors in the country ended almost four years ago, and the prime minister is deeply unpopular largely because he was appointed, not elected, and has been unable to restore order.

With the deployment plan backed by the United Nations and largely funded by the United States on hold, Haitians are left asking: What now?

Kenya’s government said it would appeal the court’s ruling, but it was unclear if or when its mission would proceed. And with no other nation, including the United States and Canada, showing any willingness to lead an international force, there is no apparent Plan B.

So for many Haitians, the Kenyan court decision has left it up to the Caribbean country to come up with its own solutions.

“We no longer want to be a colony of the United States,” said Monique Clesca, a women’s and democracy activist who was a member of the Commission to Search for a Haitian Solution to the Crisis. “That does not mean we do not want help. It means it must be negotiated with people who are legitimate and have the best interest of Haiti at heart.”

Clesca, a former UN official, criticized the Biden administration and the leaders of other countries for supporting Haiti’s current prime minister, Ariel Henry, who took office after the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.