{"id":147672,"date":"2025-09-16T08:36:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T08:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/147672\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T08:36:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T08:36:06","slug":"u-s-asked-canada-to-play-role-in-stabilizing-haiti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/147672\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. asked Canada to play role in stabilizing Haiti"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Police officers on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, on Aug. 4. In late August, the U.S. proposed a draft UN resolution to create a Gang Suppression Force.Fildor Pq Egeder\/Reuters<\/p>\n

The Trump administration<\/a> has urged Canada to play a role in helping to stabilize Haiti, a country that has faced years of political upheaval, escalating gang violence and economic malaise.<\/p>\n

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand told The Globe and Mail Monday that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally raised the plight of Haiti with her in a one-on-one meeting on Aug. 21 in Washington.<\/p>\n

But Ms. Anand said it would be premature to say that Canada is considering sending peacekeeping troops to help defeat the gangs sowing chaos in Haiti<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ms. Anand said she will be going to New York next week for the United Nations General Assembly for further discussions on a Haitian stabilization plan.<\/p>\n

Mr. Rubio has been pushing for a new international 5,500-member Gang Suppression Force to replace the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support Mission.<\/p>\n

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The Kenyan-led MSS, authorized by the UN Security Council, was deployed in 2024 to help the underfunded Haitian police force curb gang violence. It is unclear whether Kenya and other MSS troops would remain as part of the new U.S.-proposed GSF force.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe work we are doing with the United States and indeed all the partners with the multicountry initiative that is currently being led by Kenya is to ensure that we are supporting the stability of the region,\u201d Ms. Anand said. \u201cThat is the tenor of my conversation with Marco Rubio. There is no conversation at this point about anything more.\u201d<\/p>\n

In late August, the U.S. proposed a draft UN resolution, along with Panama, that would create a Gang Suppression Force, including a UN office in the capital of Port-au-Prince to handle logistics and drone surveillance. <\/p>\n

Mr. Rubio also announced new measures to crack down on weapons trafficking to Haiti, including from Jamaica and other Caribbean nations. <\/p>\n

Haitian gangs have been able to buy sophisticated weapons \u2212 some smuggled from the U.S. \u2212 that can pierce armoured vehicles, leaving poorly equipped Haitian police at their mercy.<\/p>\n

More than 3,000 people have been killed in the first six months of this year from gang violence and over one million Haitians have been displaced from their homes.<\/p>\n

Amid political unrest and violence in Haiti in 2024, then-U.S. president Joe Biden asked Canada to send peacekeeping troops, but the Trudeau government rejected the idea.<\/p>\n

Fen Hampson, professor of international affairs at Carleton University, said Canada would probably have little choice but to say yes to a request from the Trump administration given tense tariff negotiations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the Americans ask us to step up to the plate with more than words and actually put some troops on the ground, it would be pretty hard in the current circumstances to say no for obvious reasons,\u201d he said. \u201cNotwithstanding that Haiti is in a virtual state of anarchy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Hampson said he doesn\u2019t believe a 5,500-member force would be enough to quell the violence and stabilize the country.<\/p>\n

He noted that every previous international effort to stabilize Haiti going back decades has failed. Any new initiative must not only include a substantial international force but significant economic measures.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are going to go in, you better be ready for some heavy lifting,\u201d Mr. Hampson said. \u201cThe alternative is to let Haiti continue to disintegrate on its own.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Carleton University professor Marylynn Steckley, also an expert on Haiti, said it would be a mistake for Canada to align with the U.S. on any peacekeeping mission.<\/p>\n

It has been tried many times in the past and failed, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt scares me to think that Canada might partner with Rubio,\u201d she said, arguing Ottawa needs to put its money into helping Haiti\u2019s poor and desperate. In the past, she said, Canadian aid has been linked to exploiting Haitian resources or pushing them to export their food when people are starving.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanadian interventionism has been going on for decades and it has always been in a way that has not been aligned with an urban poor, pro-peasant agenda,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Since 2022, Canada has contributed more than $400-million in international aid and security assistance to Haiti, including more than $86-million to the MSS. <\/p>\n

Canada has donated surveillance drones to the Haitian police to help reduce the danger faced by uniformed officers as they conduct patrols, according to Global Affairs Canada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Police officers on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, on Aug. 4. In late August,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44,1008,714],"class_list":{"0":"post-147672","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-pleasemod","12":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}