The first contingent of Kenyan police officers arrived in Haiti on June 25, 2024, marking the beginning of the actual deployment of the UN-authorized Multinational Security Support mission that had been planned, debated, legally challenged, and delayed for months. The arrival of the Kenyan units, joined by small contingents from Jamaica, Belize, and the Bahamas, provided the most tangible evidence yet that the international community was moving from statements of concern to concrete security assistance.
The deployment, while welcomed, arrived at a scale far below what was needed or originally envisioned. The authorized mission had a ceiling of 2,500 personnel; the forces that arrived in the initial deployment numbered in the hundreds. The gap between authorization and deployment, between the mission as conceived and the mission as actually present on the ground, was stark and concerning to those who had hoped for a more robust intervention.
The Kenyan officers were experienced police professionals trained in counter-gang operations, and their arrival was accompanied by equipment and intelligence support from international partners. Joint patrols with the Haitian National Police began in some areas, providing a degree of security reinforcement that the depleted police force had been unable to provide alone.
The arrival of the mission coincided with a partial reopening of the Port-au-Prince airport on May 20, which had been closed for three months due to gang violence. The airport reopening — facilitated by US military support that flew in supplies and civilian contractors — provided a logistical lifeline for the mission’s operations and for the humanitarian supply chain that had been severed during the gang offensive.