United Nations, Apr 26 (EFE).- The new UN envoy for Haiti, Ecuadorian María Isabel Salvador, warned this Wednesday of the significant increase in violence that is being seen in the country and called for the immediate dispatch of an international force to help the National Police to combat the armed gangs.
This operation, which the United Nations already proposed last October, has remained blocked until now as no country willing to lead it has been found.
“We need to find innovative ways to define the force to support the Haitian National Police. Haiti requires immediate assistance to respond to increasing gang violence and develop its police force,” Salvador told the Security Council.
According to the UN representative, the “rapid deterioration of the situation” requires an international response and further delay could cause a “contagion effect of insecurity in the region.”
“Haitians cannot wait. We have to act now,” Salvador insisted to the members of the Security Council, who, in general, have been favorable to sending that international force requested by the UN, but which has not yet crystallized.
The proposal made in October by the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, called for establishing a “rapid action force” made up of soldiers from one or more countries and that would not act under the UN banner, which has a negative image in the country after allegedly the “blue helmets” that it had deployed between 2004 and 2017 were at the origin of a cholera outbreak that killed at least 10,000 people.
According to diplomatic sources, the United States and Canada have promoted talks about this possible international intervention, but so far they have shown no intention of leading the operation and no country with the capacity and willingness to do so has been found.
The United Nations stresses that the situation is increasingly pressing, especially after the sharp rise in violence seen recently, which, for example, left seventy dead in just a few days, between April 14 and 19, in clashes between gangs rivals in Cité Soleil, the largest shanty town in Port-au-Prince.
“Gang violence is expanding at an alarming rate in areas previously considered relatively safe in Port-au-Prince and outside the capital,” Salvador said today.
Murders, rapes and kidnappings have become practically continuous in areas of Haiti, according to the UN, which warned that -given the incapacity of the authorities- some civilians “have begun to try to solve matters with their own hands”.
Salvador gave as an example an episode recorded just two days ago, when a crowd beat to death and burned the bodies of thirteen alleged members of an armed gang who had been intercepted by the Police.
“These dynamics inevitably lead to the rupture of the social fabric with unpredictable consequences for the entire region,” warned the former Ecuadorian foreign minister.
