On Wednesday, proponents of sending an expert international force to assist Haiti’s police in eradicating armed gangs menacing the nation made progress toward gaining the backing of Caribbean leaders.
The 15 nation Caribbean Community, or CARICOM, which is currently headed by Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, said in a press conference on Wednesday that the regional group now believes that Haiti’s police force needs to be strengthened in order to establish a safe corridor for the entry of humanitarian aid, which Haiti urgently needs.
When gangs took over the nation’s main port and fuel terminal in October, Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry appealed for international assistance with the deployment of a specialist force to assist the Haiti national police in fending them off.
The country’s southern and northern regions are shut off by the blocking of major roadways, despite the fact that gangs no longer have authority over them.
Nearly half of the 12 million residents of the nation, according to the United Nation, require humanitarian relief, and millions of them are going hungry.
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Caribbean Leaders Link Hunger To Changed Thinking
As an explanation for the improvement in their thinking, Skerrit pointed to the fact that Haitians go to bed hungry.
Caribbean leaders decided against supporting a special security mission to Haiti in February at a meeting in The Bahamas after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was present, stated that his country would instead concentrate on funding the police and imposing sanctions on members of Haiti’s political and economic elite who were suspected of supporting gang activity and bringing in illegal arms.
The United States, which sent a sizable team to the conference in The Bahamas, had hoped that Canada would be in charge of a security operation there and that CARICOM would back such a deployment. The bloc includes Haiti.
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Source: miamiherald.com