Haiti under siege: 'Just when we think situation has reached rock bottom, it deteriorates further'

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00:00The Trump administration, meanwhile, freezing its aid to the Kenya-led international police force for Haiti.

00:0813 million dollars provided by Washington for that.

00:12The move comes just as the gangs that had overrun the capital, Port-au-Prince,

00:18have been laying siege to the upscale suburb of Kenskof. Solange Mougin has more.

00:24Lining up for food, many of these Haitians in the capital's affluent neighbourhood of Kenskof

00:31have nowhere else to go. Like nearly a million others who've been left homeless by gang violence

00:36in recent years in Haiti. With gangs killing and shooting indiscriminately, they've been

00:41expanding their control. The United Nations says they could soon overrun the capital.

00:47Port-au-Prince is already 85 percent under their thumb.

00:50The UN has warned that more money, equipment and personnel are needed to avoid

00:57a catastrophic collapse of the island's security institutions.

01:01But for Donald Trump, such needs are contrary to his push to cut foreign aid.

01:06The UN confirmed that his administration has put a 90-day freeze on the over 13

01:10million dollars that it's contributed to a UN-backed security fund for Haiti.

01:16We received an official notification from the US asking for an immediate stop work order

01:24on their contribution to the multinational security support force.

01:31For that force, the MSS, 110 million dollars has been raised to date.

01:36But it's widely seen as insufficient. Just 800 of the 2500 security personnel that was hoped for

01:42have been deployed. Among them, soldiers from Kenya, Jamaica, Guatemala and Belize.

01:48On Tuesday, 70 soldiers from El Salvador arrived to help.

01:52The leader of the multinational mission welcomed them.

01:55We are destined and we are focused. Our trajectory,

01:58our focus is on the ball. And the meaning is that we are going to succeed.

02:03Meanwhile, at another airport, Haitians who fled the gang violence were forced to return.

02:09The first plane of deportees arrived in Haiti from the United States

02:13as part of Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration.

02:17For more, let's go to Mexico City. Diego Darín is Haiti analyst

02:21for International Crisis Group. Thank you for speaking with us here on France 24.

02:27Thank you for having me.

02:30What do you make of the timing of this announcement coming just as there's been this

02:35week-long siege of the Port-au-Prince suburb of Kenscoff?

02:41Well, every time that we see the situation in Haiti, we think that the situation has

02:48reached the rocky bottom, but it deteriorates every day. Now, the announcement of this

02:54freeze of funds by the U.S., which has been the main financial backer of this force,

03:03is concerning, and mostly at this time that the gangs are again trying to surround Petionville,

03:11which are the upscale neighborhoods that have been out of reach of the gangs, the little part

03:17of the capital that is not controlled by the gangs, and they are trying to strengthen their

03:22positions around Petionville to mount a siege on this last enclave of the capital that is not

03:30controlled by them. And why now? Well, they have been trying for some time. This is not new. They

03:38already tried to make an incursion in Petionville in late November. That really went wrong because

03:46of the response of the police, but mostly because of the response of the vigilante brigades, which

03:51are self-defense groups that have been spreading around all the neighborhoods that are not yet

03:57controlled by the gangs. And can we draw any conclusions as to the effectiveness of this

04:07international police force in the face of this, or are they still in the setting up phase?

04:14Well, the police mission led by Kenya has been doing what they can with the funds,

04:20the equipment, and the staff that they have on the ground. Right now, there has been a few

04:27contingents of Salvador, Guatemala, and Kenya that have been deploying in the past month,

04:35and the mission has now over 800 officers. But this is just a third of the total amount of

04:42personnel that the mission was supposed to have, which is 2,500. So the mission really had a

04:50security strategy to deal with the gangs in the capital, but right now they don't have enough

04:57staff, enough equipment, because there is a lack of resources to have what it is necessary to see,

05:06at least, if the mission has a chance against the gangs.

05:11You mentioned Guatemala. The announcement coming, just as the U.S. Secretary of State

05:16is making his way on a Latin America tour from Guatemala to Haiti's neighbor, the Dominican

05:21Republic. Why freeze this aid now? Well, this comes in the context of the general

05:31freeze of foreign aid by the United States that was announced last week. So the funds that were

05:38committed by the previous administration to the trust fund to finance the mission were also frozen.

05:46Top Kenyan officials have said that the mission benefits of a waiver from this freeze,

05:56but this hasn't been yet confirmed by the Trump administration yet. So we don't know

06:02if after this freeze of funds, the U.S. administration will continue to fund the mission.

06:09But what we think is that the new administration will ask for significant contributions from other

06:18countries so that the United States is not the one who is giving the bulk of the funds of the MSS.

06:27All right. So not enough police. A top donor who is an unreliable provider at this point.

06:36What is crisis group suggesting happen next? What should Haitians do? What should the

06:41international community do? Well, right now there are discussions

06:45about transitioning from the MSS to a peacekeeping operation that would be a UN mission. That means

06:52that the mission would be financed by contributions, by assessed contributions.

07:02So that would have more security of having enough funds to have sufficient personnel dealing with

07:08the gangs in the capital and the other regions where they operate. But the fact is that the

07:16secretary general has said that there is no peace to keep, and he wants to change the way

07:22the peace operations operate, because this will have to be a very robust mission,

07:28not only about keeping peace, but really going into a war zone, because Port-au-Prince right now

07:35is a city in war. So maybe there has to be some creative ways of having a new kind of mission

07:44with assessed contributions that could guarantee that the mission is sufficiently funded.

07:52Yeah, because previous UN missions have left a bitter taste in Haiti.

07:57Yes, they have. The MINUSTA that was in Haiti between 2004 and 2017 introduced cholera.

08:07And there was also hundreds of cases of sexual abuse in women, girls, and even boys.

08:16And the question now is, if you have sufficient protocols for protection of human rights,

08:25would it be better to have a UN peacekeeping operation even learning from the mistakes of

08:33the past or letting the gangs use gender-based violence? There was over 5,600 people killed

08:41last year. The total number of displaced persons was tripled in 2024. So we have to strike a

08:51balance, understand the mistakes of past missions, and try to come up with an urgent solution

09:00in a scenario that is, well, really Haiti now is in the brink of collapse.

09:10Diego Durin, many thanks for joining us from Mexico City.

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