| Haiti Mission For BDF Soldiers Still Up In The Air |
| Wed, January 31, 2024 |
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| As Haiti's humanitarian crisis worsens, Kenya's high court recently ruled to block a U.N.-backed deployment of Kenyan police officers to Haiti to combat the country's escalating gang violence. Though Belize has explored the avenue of offering enforcement assistance to Haiti, we asked the Foreign Minister today if any of these missions are expected to materialize soon, where Belize's BDF would be deployed. Fonseca says that they are awaiting the finances to continue planning.
Francis Fonseca, Minister of Foreign Affairs & Foreign Trade
"As you know Belize is committed to joining the CARICOM, what they call a multinational security support mission. So Belize has already made that commitment obviously, there are a number of outstanding issues that have to be cleared up the whole logistics of the mission the financing of the mission. There has been a lot of talk about financing the mission, but there had been no final discussions about how it will be financed and that is a concern for all of us in CARICOM. The exit strategy, so there are outstanding issues. Belize is committed to participating, but obviously we want to ensure that if we set our soldiers into Haiti that they will be safe that we will not be sending them into a situation where they are going to lose their lives are going to be injured, so there are a number of outstanding issues as I said that have to be resolved. Belize remains committed as we watch the unfolding of the case in Kenya. The latest position from the Kenyan government is that they are prepared to proceed with the mission, but I think we will have another discussion between CARICOM and Kenya we had one about two weeks ago two or three weeks ago the CARICOM foreign minister and Kenya to discuss the details and I expect that we will have another follow up meeting in the next few weeks."
And even though no arrangements are in place, our sources say that soldiers are training to be deployed at the end of March.
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