Caribbean Nations Still Waiting on Green Light for Haiti Mission  

The multinational security support mission that was meant to be deployed in Haiti is still in limbo. In early April, a team of Belize Defense Force soldiers and coast guard officers travelled to Jamaica for advanced military training to prepare for the possibility of a Haiti relief mission. For years, Haiti has been riddled with violence, as gangs engage in ongoing gun battles with police. And while a Kenyan-led support mission has been approved by the U.N., it has yet to act. Today, president of the Association of Caribbean Commissioners of Police, Atlee Rodney, was asked about the status of that mission. Here’s what he had to say.

 

Atlee Rodney, President, ACCP

“Basically, this is a policymaking decision. That’s not really the decision of the individual police forces. And it’s a geopolitics matter, and if the government of the day and the policymakers of the day make that decision, we as law enforcement organizations will have to go with it. What we do in the meantime is to study what is happening. We look at all the intelligence that are coming from Haiti. We prepare our men and women for deployment if that becomes necessary. We do all of that work in the background, but the final decision has to be deployed in a foreign country is left with the policymakers.”