WATCH: Blinken visits Haiti in show of U.S. support for efforts to fight gang violence (263 hits)
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived Thursday in Haiti to reaffirm the U.S. government’s commitment to a multinational mission to fight gangs in the Caribbean country and push for long-awaited general elections.
Some 400 Kenyan police have been deployed to Haiti to lead a U.N.-backed mission to quell gang violence in the Haitian capital and beyond, but concerns have grown that the mission lacks enough funding and equipment.
Brian Nichols, U.S. assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs, said Wednesday that the U.S. government is considering a U.N. peacekeeping operation as one way to secure money and resources to fight gangs that control 80 percent of Haiti’s capital.
Blinken arrived a day after Haiti’s government extended a state of emergency to the entire country. It had been imposed earlier in the year in the capital and surrounding areas in an attempt to stem the ongoing violence.
