Kenya Plans Advance Visits To Haiti Before Deployment

Kenya’s interior minister has said that the country will send assessment delegations to Haiti before deploying police officers to address gang violence there.

“There will be other pre-mission visits to Haiti by different players before our officers set foot there,” Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki told a parliamentary committee on Thursday.

In August, Kenya sent its first fact-finding mission to Haiti.

Mr Kindiki also said that the officers were equipped to take on Haiti’s gangs as they had been successfully deployed to several countries before, including Namibia, Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Sierra Leone.

He added that police officers were part of the Kenyan security forces currently deployed to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and South Sudan.

He has, however, said that the deployment will happen after passing all the legal requirements, including approval by the parliament and the senate.

Last week, the UN approved the deployment of Kenyan police officers to Haiti but a court on Monday temporarily stopped it, pending a ruling on whether it is a constitutional.

BBC/Jide Johnson.