DAP-K party leader Eugene Wamalwa now wants US President-elect Donald Trump to withdraw support for the Multinational Security Support Mission to Haiti.
Speaking in Kitale during a DAP-K Women League meeting, Wamalwa urged Trump to revisit the deployment, saying it should be cancelled so Kenyan police officers can return home to fight the rising crime.
“While we are taking our police officers to a place over 10,000 kilometres away to protect Haitians, our women and children have been left unprotected,” Wamalwa said.
He pressed that the situation in Kenya was dire. “The ratio of police to Kenyan citizens is dangerously low,” he said.
This shortage of officers, he said, is contributing to the problem of abductions and killings in the country.
Wamalwa also called on the US to audit the funds allocated to the Haiti mission. “We ask the US to make sure that every dollar is utilized well,” he said.
Kenya had pledged police officers to Haiti after the country made an appeal for international intervention in its fight against gangs and spiraling violence. In July, the Kenyan government confirmed the deployment of security personnel.
In October 2023, the United Nations Security Council commissioned a Multinational Security Support Mission to Haiti. The mission, spearheaded by Kenya, is intended to assist the Haitian police in restoring order and security.
The Haitian authorities have failed to contain gang violence since 2018. The situation dramatically ran out of hand in 2023, with an increase in homicides, kidnappings, and cases of sexual violence.
Gang violence killed more than 3,000 people and forced at least half a million people to flee their homes between January and May 2023.
That was a mission led by the United States and other nations to try to restore order to the troubled nation.
