Tag: Jacqueline Charles

Basseterre, St. Kitts and Nevis U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio began a day of talks with Caribbean leaders here telling them he wants to...

In a ceremony Monday, Fils-Aimé described the agreement as “a contract” designed to put the country on the road toward stability, elections and security. “The stability of a country doesn’t depend solely on security in the streets and the neighborhoods,” he said. The pact doesn’t provide an end date for the current governmental transition, the third since the July 7, 2021, assassination of President Jovenel Moïse plunged the country deeper into instability.

“I think what’s important here for all of us is that Haitians are seen leading their security initiative,” he said. “If we are left here without a 35- to 50,000 man force in the country, I don’t believe there’s any hope of sustained security in Haiti. We have the last four years that point to that. And so what we’re proposing is a dual framework, in addition to the Gang Suppression Force, to augment train and to leave behind Haitian security forces that can sustain in a durable manner.”

Efforts to establish a United Nations office in Haiti to provide logistical and operational support for the newly authorized Gang Suppression Force are on track to meet Security Council deadlines, Secretary-General António Guterres’ office said. “The first air asset from the mission, which is a helicopter, is now in Port-au-Prince,” Stéphane Dujarric, Guterres’ spokesman said. “This is an important step for our colleagues’ logistics and operational mobility.”

“We’re far from being done with this operation,” said the task force operative who spoke to the Herald. “But I would say we’re at least at the end of the beginning. And what we’ve seen of [the Haitian national police] is now the ability to go and clear these neighborhoods, overmatch the gangs that tend to not want to fight as much because the gangs lose those fights.”