The U.S. has notified the United Nations that it is freezing funding to a U.N.-backed mission in Haiti tasked with fighting gangs trying to seize full control of the country’s capital, the U.N. said Tuesday.
The U.S. has been the biggest contributor to the mission led by Kenyan police, which was launched last year and is struggling with a lack of funding and personnel.
The move caught many offguard especially in Kenya.
The halt will have an “immediate impact” on the mission, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
The United States had committed $15 million to the trust fund that finances the multinational force, he said.
With $1.7 million of that already spent, “$13.3 million is now frozen,” Dujarric said.
The move comes as U.S. President Donald Trump imposes a sweeping freeze on foreign assistance, leading to thousands of U.S. aid agency employees and contractors being laid off and programs worldwide shut down.
The international security mission, while approved by the U.N. Security Council, is not a United Nations operation and currently relies on voluntary contributions.
The mission has so far made little progress toward helping Haiti restore order.
There are around nearly 900 police and troops from Kenya, El Salvador, Jamaica, Guatemala and Belize.
More than $110 million has been paid into a U.N. trust fund for the mission, more than half of it from Canada, according to U.N. data.
Just hours after taking office on January 20, Trump ordered a 90-day pause so foreign aid contributions could be reviewed to see if they align with his “America First” foreign policy.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has offered a waiver for life-saving programs, but confusion over what is exempt from stop-work orders and fear of losing U.S. aid permanently is still freezing aid and development work globally.
The halt in funding appeared to take officials leading the Kenyan mission by surprise.
The mission works alongside Haiti’s National Police, which is severely underfunded and understaffed and has received millions of dollars from the U.S. government in recent years to help fight gangs. Currently, there are only about 4,000 Haitian police officers on duty at a time in a country of more than 11 million people.
The announcement was made just hours after a military contingent of 70 soldiers from El Salvador arrived in Haiti, joining more than 600 Kenyan police officers already on the ground backed by police and soldiers from other countries including Belize, Jamaica and Guatemala.
It’s unclear what impact the halt in U.S. funding for the mission might have on efforts to transform it into a U.N.-peacekeeping mission.
The halt in funding comes amid a relentless attack by hundreds of gang members in an upscale neighborhood in the capital of Port-au-Prince that began more than a week ago and has left at least 40 dead.
Gangs already control 85 percent of the capital, and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres recently warned they could overrun Port-au-Prince without additional support for the multinational force.
More than 5,600 people were reported killed last year across Haiti and more than 2,200 others were injured.
Gang violence has left more than one million people homeless in recent years, according to the U.N.
“It’s obvious that the situation in Haiti is one of unprecedented severity,” said Diego Da Rin, an analyst with the International Crisis Group.
Dujarric said a recent U.N. human rights report on Haiti reiterated concerns over the continuing rape and sexual exploitation of women and girls by gang members, and the recruitment of children into the gangs.
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