The U.S. has notified the United Nations that it is freezing some funding to aUN- backed mission in Haiti tasked with fighting gangs trying to seize full control of the country’s capital, the U.N.
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 change in funding will have an “immediate impact,” U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said.
The move comes as U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed 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.
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 United States had committed Ksh1.9 billion to the trust fund that helps finance the multinational force in Haiti, Dujarric said. With Ksh219million of that already spent, “Ksh1.6billion is now frozen,” he said.
“We will await further guidance from the U.S. regarding its contribution,” the U.N. spokesman said.
he fund, which now has less than $100 million of the estimated $600 million required annually for the multinational force, is not the only U.S. support for the mission. Millions more U.S. dollars have been contributed directly to operations and support.
On Jan. 29, the U.S. State Department approved an aid freeze waiver for the mission for $41 million and waiver requests for another more than $30 million in assistance are pending, according to U.S. officials.
The funding that was halted appeared to take officials leading the Kenyan mission by surprise. When asked for comment, mission spokesman Jack Mbaka declined to give any immediate reaction.
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 Jamaica and Guatemala.
It’s unclear what impact the change in U.S. funding for the mission might have on efforts to transform it into a U.N. peacekeeping mission.
