A United Nations human rights expert warned Friday that gang violence is spreading across Haiti, while the U.N.-backed mission to combat crime in the troubled Caribbean country remains underfunded and understaffed.
Haitian police still lack the “logistical and technical capacity” needed to fight gangs, which William O’Neill, who visited Haiti this week, said are encroaching on new territory as weapons and ammunition enter the country despite an international embargo.
“The humanitarian consequences are dramatic,” he said, warning of rampant inflation, a lack of basic supplies and “internal displacement, which further increases the vulnerability of the population, particularly children and women.”
From April to the end of June, at least 1,379 people were killed or injured in Haiti, and another 428 were kidnapped, according to the UN.
Meanwhile, at least 700,000 people have been left homeless in recent years due to persistent gang violence in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and beyond, more than half of them children, O’Neill says.
He said he spoke to Haitian police chief Rameau Normil, who told him they only have 5,000 officers for a country of more than 11 million people.
“It’s impossible to provide security,” O’Neill says Normil told him.
O’Neill said Haiti’s people “lack everything” and added that authorities must be held accountable “to fight corruption and poor governance, which continues to plunge the country into an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.”
He warned that the current mission, led by 400 Kenyan police officers who arrived in Haiti in late June, has deployed less than a quarter of the promised contingent.
“The equipment they have received is inadequate, and their resources are insufficient,” O’Neill said.
Washington is considering a UN peacekeeping operation in Haiti as a way to ensure funding and staffing for the Kenyan-led mission, while the UN has pushed for more funding for the current mission.
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