Diplomats at the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday voiced broad support for converting a security mission helping Haitian police fight escalating gang warfare into a formal UN peacekeeping mission, though Russia and China remained opposed.
Haiti’s security crisis dramatically escalated this month as gangs shot at commercial planes, flights into the country were halted, the prime minister was replaced, and armed gangs attacked parts of the capital previously spared the worst the violence.
Leaders of the Caribbean nation have repeatedly requested that a long-delayed and under-resourced Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission that partially deployed in June be converted into a peacekeeping mission to shore up funding.
The proposal was circulated in a draft resolution by the United States and Ecuador in early September, but dropped from a final resolution renewing the MSS mandate amid opposition from Russia and China — both veto powers.
Haiti's UN Ambassador Antonio Rodrigue added that a new peacekeeping mission should learn from the mistakes of past interventions in Haiti, which became notorious for human rights abuses and sparking a deadly cholera epidemic.
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