US to Ruto: Washington can’t fund Kenya-led Haiti security mission alone
Washington and Panama are pushing a draft resolution to replace Kenya-led MSS mission with a Gang Suppression Force, five times larger and more independent of Haiti's police.
Washington has delivered a blunt message that it will no longer carry the bulk of the financial burden for Haiti's security mission.
The warning came during a meeting convened by President William Ruto on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
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Christopher Landau, America's deputy secretary of state, insisted that the United States "cannot continue to carry the lion's share of the financial burden," though he offered rhetorical support for the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission.
Washington and Panama are pushing a draft resolution to replace it with a Gang Suppression Force, five times larger and more independent of Haiti's police.
Yet the plan faces stiff resistance: Russia and China object to funding it with UN members' dues, while sceptics question how 5,500 troops could be recruited when the current mission never reached 1,000.
Regional backing is also shaky.
"We need more clarity on what the mission is going to be like and what the numbers are going to be like," said Barbados's prime minister, Mia Mottley, hinting at CARICOM's reluctance.
China's envoy, Geng Shuang, added that Haiti must "assume primary responsibility by taking concrete actions."
Ruto, however, railed against the "game of guesswork" that has plagued the current mission, citing broken-down second-hand American vehicles, inadequate logistics and the death of a Kenyan policeman towing one such vehicle in Port-au-Prince.
He argued that the MSS has nonetheless achieved modest gains—pushing gangs back and reopening schools and hospitals—even at only 40 per cent strength.
Ruto had championed the Haiti mission with bravado in 2023, brushing off critics and a court injunction, only now to lament the very resource gaps they had warned of.
No African country attended his New York meeting; instead, the room was filled with delegates from China, Turkey, Spain and Barbados, hardly a ringing endorsement of Kenya's costly gamble.
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