Kenya's high court extends a block on sending police to Haiti

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00:00 Thursday saw Nairobi's bid to send troops to Haiti, both overcome a hurdle and encountering

00:06 a new one. Parliament approved the government's request to send 1,000 police officers to help

00:12 the Caribbean nation battle gang violence. However, just hours later, the High Court

00:17 effectively extended orders first delivered in October to block that deployment by saying

00:23 that it will not be ruling on whether it could go forward until January. Now, earlier this

00:28 year, Nairobi agreed to lead the multinational force to Haiti, backed by the UN Security

00:34 Council, but opposition MPs have been fiercely opposed to the bid. Earlier, I spoke to Dr.

00:41 Frederick Adjuang, and I asked him about what this back and forth between the government

00:48 and the judiciary meant for the deployment in the long term.

00:53 I would say that tentatively for now, we can assume that the deployment will go ahead,

00:59 give up by the crucial High Court ruling in January 26. Because we know the Kenyan legislators

01:05 have officially sanctioned the deployment of the 1,000 Kenyan police officers to Haiti

01:09 today. So we are halfway towards the deployment. So we have to wait until the High Court will

01:15 actually make a decision on this in January. The Kenyan opposition, as you clearly say,

01:20 has contested the deployment, asserting that the Kenyan constitution specifically permits

01:24 the deployment of the Kenyan armed forces, but not the police. But despite the opposition

01:30 making a case against the deployment, the government majority secured the passage of

01:34 the motion. So the constitutional legality of the deployment of the police officers is

01:38 also to be determined by the High Court. So that's where the problem is. Does the Kenyan

01:42 constitution allow the deployment of Kenyan police officers outside the Kenyan judicial

01:48 boundaries or not? So we know that the High Court is supposed to make a decision on this

01:53 issue in January. So we have to wait until the court makes the decision before the deployment

01:58 can go ahead. But again, very much familiar with the Kenyan legal system, it's pretty

02:06 much possible if the High Court allows and sanctions the deployment, then the civil society

02:11 organization might again go to the Court of Appeal to stop the deployment. And so we can

02:15 have this case going all the way to the Supreme Court and that might take a bit of time. So

02:19 it could be quite a protracted battle to get the police to Haiti should the government

02:27 be determined to pursue it. But in general, though, why has there been quite so much back

02:33 and forth over this? Why has there been so much criticism of plans to send Kenyan police

02:40 officers to help another country? I think precisely because there's no public buy-in

02:47 into the whole decision to take Kenyan policemen to Haiti, really. Kenyans cannot really understand

02:52 why the president wants to send 1,000 police officers to Haiti, a country that really has

02:57 no geopolitical relevance to Kenya. And essentially, Kenya also has its own internal security issues.

03:04 In the KOS region in the northern part of Kenya, we have the Al-Shabaab problem. So that's

03:08 why the question is arising that why should we essentially reduce the capacity of the

03:13 Kenyan police forces to sort of ensure security in the state and deploy those police officers

03:19 in Haiti, a country that has no complete economic or geopolitical relevance to Kenya. And so

03:25 that's where the problem is coming in. There is no public buy-in into this process of deploying

03:30 the police officers to Haiti. I think the president has not really made a robust case

03:33 to the Kenyan population on why we need to deploy the police officers to Haiti in the

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