More than 2,000 Haiti police officers will fly to Kenya for training, officials have revealed.
The team will be flown to Kenya for a short training on law, combat and other policing matters before they go back to their country for deployment, it was agreed.
A delegation of Kenyan officials who visited Haiti on a fact-finding mission for a week is expected back in the country on May 27.
Sources said they agreed on various issues to be addressed ahead of the planned deployment of police officers by mid-June, 2024.
“The training of the police officers is part of what we have agreed. It will be cheaper and easier to train them in Kenya for say two weeks or more before they are deployed in Haiti,” said a highly placed source.
Kenya has a variety of barracks they can train Haitian personnel.
President William Ruto said the peacekeeping police force is expected to arrive in Haiti to help quell growing gang violence in about three weeks.
The officers were expected to start arriving before end of May but an advance team on the ground said some logistics are not ready hence the extension by two more weeks.
This means the latest they can arrive there is June 15.
Kenya, which is leading the 2,500-member security force, has agreed with the Haitian government on rules of engagement for the security personnel, who could face fierce opposition from the well-armed Haitian gangs that have taken over the country’s capital and overwhelmed local police.
But the agreement has not yet been committed to writing or submitted to the United Nations Security Council, a prerequisite for the multinational security mission, or MSS, to begin.
The Kenyan delegation found that Haiti lacks the equipment to accommodate the deployment of the police officers.
The Kenyan team found that the country not only lacks armoured vehicles to move the foreign troops around, it also faces a deficit of radios and communications equipment.
The mission still needs to procure helicopters to evacuate potential casualties from the country, where dozens of hospitals have been destroyed or looted since February 29, when gangs united to topple the government.
But the officials said they will be fully ready to deploy by mid June.
In April, President Joe Biden authorised a $60 million military aid package using what is called presidential drawdown authority to get rifles and ammunition into the hands of the Haiti National Police, and to allow the Kenya-led force to quickly deploy.
In Haiti, anticipation is high that the arrival of foreign forces will help loosen the tight grip by armed gangs that have forced shortages in medications and food.
Without the funds, either from the US or other countries, supporters fear the country will be facing not just a full gang take over, but a humanitarian catastrophe.
Earlier this month, members of Haiti’s newly installed transitional presidential council, tasked with putting together a new government, wrote to Ruto asking him to deploy Kenyan police.
The cops will serve as the backbone of a force that will include officers from at least six different countries from Africa, the Caribbean and southern Asia.
More than 1,000 police officers will join other teams in deploying to Haiti to fight gangs terrorising locals.
Apart from Kenya, other countries that will send officers to Haiti are; Chile, Jamaica, Grenada, Paraguay, Burundi, Chad, Nigeria and Mauritius.
The teams are from the Rapid Deployment Unit, Anti Stock Theft Unit, General Service Unit and Border Patrol Unit.
This is a combat-trained team that officials say can handle the situation on the ground professionally.
They have undertaken training in various areas including language.
In an interview with the BBC, Ruto confirmed a planning team was already in Haiti and had met local police to secure arrangements before the Kenyan troops are deployed.
Ruto's comments came as he concluded a three-day trip to Washington DC, the first official state visit of any African leader to the US in over 15 years.
During his trip, the White House called for the swift deployment of the Kenyan-led multinational force, after a US couple was named among three missionaries killed in Haiti on Friday.
"I have a team already in Haiti as I speak to you," Ruto told the BBC on Friday.
"That will give us a frame of what things look like on the ground, the capabilities that are available, the infrastructure that has been set up."
"Once we have that assessment that we agreed with the Haitian police and the Haitian leadership, we are looking at the horizon of between three weeks and there about for us to be ready to deploy, once everything on the ground is set."
Last year, Kenya offered to lead a UN-backed multinational security force to restore order to the Caribbean island.
Gangs have taken over much of Haiti, bringing violence and destruction to its besieged capitol, Port-au-Prince in the wake of the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021.
On Friday, two US missionaries were killed in Haiti by gangs.
Ruto said these types of events are "exactly" why his country was preparing to send in its police force.
"We shouldn't be losing people. We shouldn't be losing missionaries. We are doing this to stop more people from losing their lives to gangs."
The US is also a part of the multi-national coalition working with Kenya.
Ruto said a base where troops and equipment will be kept—being built in conjunction with the US —is about "70 per cent complete".
The president said Kenya has moved cautiously to ensure security concerns have been addressed, including plans for equipment, infrastructure and building a relationship with Haiti's police force.
Ruto assured there is a written agreement with Haiti's transitional presidential council to ensure Kenya's presence will be received as a "peacemaking" force and not an occupying force.
The council has signalled it intends to honour the agreement with Ruto, which was signed by Haiti's former Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
Henry resigned in March after weeks of mounting pressure and increasing violence in the country.
Haiti is not the only country in crisis taking up Ruto's attention.
He said he has Kenyans "in 15 different missions globally", including in neighbouring Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
