A United Nations report published in February details several cases of exploitation and sexual violence involving members of the Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti, the MMAS. This force, essentially composed of Kenyan police officers, had been deployed from 2024 to support the police against gangs.
The investigations conducted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights have confirmed four cases of exploitation and sexual violence involving members of the Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti.
Fritznel Pierre is a member of the MMAS steering committee, a committee tasked with ensuring respect for human rights. The acts identified took place in the commune of Petite-Rivière-de-l’Artibonite, but according to him, the cases were in reality much more numerous.
“This kind of situation is becoming widespread at Petite-Rivière-de-l’Artibonite, he says. I am talking about Kenyan police. They took advantage of the fact that there aren’t many eyes on them, and they established a prostitution program with minors. And what is hardest in all this is that even the minors themselves got involved in such activities.”
The case awakens painful memories in the country. In 2014, MINUSTAH, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, had recorded 13 reports of exploitation and sexual violence.
Between 2004 and 2007, more than a hundred Sri Lankan UN soldiers had exploited children in a prostitution network.
A repetition that worries, at the moment when the first Chadian soldiers of the Gang Repression Force have just arrived in Haiti. A mission, also, validated by the United Nations.
