Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken announced Monday that the United States would provide an additional $100 million in aid toward a United Nations-backed multinational security mission planned to deploy to Haiti, which has been overrun by gang violence.
He also pledged an additional $33 million in humanitarian aid, bringing the U.S. commitments to $333 million.
“We can help. We can help restore a foundation of security,” Mr. Blinken said during a meeting of regional leaders held in Kingston, Jamaica. “Only the Haitian people can, and only the Haitian people should determine their own future, not anyone else.”
The pledge of further U.S. aid was the highlight of a meeting that seemed to achieve little progress in reaching a political resolution as unrest in Haiti’s capital has surged in the last two weeks.
Prime Minister Ariel Henry of Haiti departed for Kenya in early March to finalize an agreement for the multinational force, led by the east African nation, to deploy and take on the gangs. Since then, Mr. Henry has been stranded outside his country while gang members wreak havoc and demand his resignation.
So far, the prime minister has refused to step down even as pressure grows both in his country and abroad for him to resign. Mr. Henry, who has been staying in Puerto Rico, did not attend Monday’s meeting and it was unclear if he had taken part remotely in the discussion.
Leaders from Caribbean nations are leading a push to create a transitional council, meant to pave the way for the election of a new president and help restore stability to Haiti.
Jamaican officials said that a proposal for Haiti was still coming together and discussions were continuing, but no plan had been finalized as of Monday.
With the government on the verge of collapse, the United States and Caribbean nations are working to come up with a resolution that would restore some order to the troubled nation.
Mr. Blinken said the Department of Defense would double its approved support for the mission from $100 million to $200 million, bringing the total U.S. support to $300 million. He also announced an additional humanitarian assistance of $33 million to support health and food security.
After months of delays, Haiti and Kenya signed an agreement this month to move forward with the deployment of 1,000 Kenyan police officers to the Caribbean nation. President William Ruto of Kenya said his country had a “historic duty” to press ahead because “peace in Haiti is good for the world as a whole.”
Kenya’s interior minister, Kithure Kindiki, announced Monday that the mission was in the “predeployment stage” and that all other programs and enforcement measures related to the deployment were already in place.
So far, however, there is no clear timeline for when the multinational force will deploy.
“We are deeply distressed that it is already too late for too many who have lost far too much at the hands of criminal gangs,” said Andrew Holness, Prime Minister of Jamaica. “The fear of the situation in Haiti worsening to become a civil war is now a real one. We are all agreed that this cannot be allowed to happen, not in our hemisphere.”
Haiti is in the throes of an uprising on a scale not seen in decades. The escalation of violence, gang attacks on police stations and even coordinated assaults on two prisons have left Haitians to deal with a humanitarian disaster as access to food, water and health care has been severely curtailed.
Over the weekend, U.S. forces evacuated nonessential U.S. citizen workers from the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince and added more security personnel, according to a statement from the Defense Department’s Southern Command. It said no Haitians were included in the airlift.
