Kenyan attorneys take action to stop the sending of police to Haiti

Days before police are scheduled to arrive in Haiti to address the country’s spiraling violence, Kenyan attorneys filed a court document seeking to halt the country’s planned police deployment.

According to a statement, the High Court issued an order on Friday directing the lawsuit to be served on senior government officials and scheduling the hearing for June 12.

Kenya promised to send 1,000 officers to Haiti in July of last year in response to the country’s call for help, as the country’s security situation worsened and gang control spread, leaving millions of people in need of humanitarian aid.

But in January, the Kenyan High Court decided that without a “reciprocal arrangement” with the host government, the police personnel could not be sent to Haiti.

Then, in March, Kenyan President William Ruto signed a security agreement with Ariel Henry, the then-prime minister of Haiti, in the hopes that this would allay the court’s concerns and let the deployment to proceed.

In their complaint to the High Court on Thursday, attorneys Ekuru Aukot and Miruru Waweru, who are leaders of the Thirdway Alliance, an opposition party in Kenya, said that respondents, including Ruto and the police, had flagrantly disregarded the court’s directive by signing the reciprocal agreement with Haiti.

They threatened to hold the government in contempt of court if it continued with the deployment.

The attorneys stated in their application that “the applicants are reliably informed that the impugned deployment may be done any time from now.”
An inquiry on the application was not immediately answered by Ruto’s spokeswoman.

Following Henry’s resignation, Kenya’s government announced in March that it was halting the deployment. However, Ruto later stated that Kenya was now debating how to move forward with its deployment after worries about a power vacuum there were allayed by the swearing-in of a transition council in Haiti on April 25.

The Southern Command of the U.S. military announced this week that private contractors have reached Haiti to construct housing for the force led by Kenya.

Personnel commitments to the force have also come from Bangladesh, Benin, Bolivia, Barbados, Jamaica, and the Bahamas.

Participation in the mission has been reluctance among foreign countries. After severe cholera epidemics and sex abuse scandals were left behind by earlier U.N. missions, many Haitians have likewise been skeptical of foreign involvement.