The Kenyan-Led Intervention in Haiti Hits a Roadblock

The proposed Kenyan-led force was a bad idea anyway, so it is better that Kenya’s High Court stopped it before it could get started.

The ill-advised Kenyan-led intervention in Haiti that the U.S. has been encouraging for the last year just hit a major roadblock:

A Kenyan court halted a government plan to send police forces to rein in powerful gangs in Haiti, saying such a deployment would be unconstitutional.

The plan “contravenes the Constitution and the law and is therefore unconstitutional, illegal and invalid,” High Court Judge Chacha Mwita ruled Friday in the capital, Nairobi. “An order is hereby issued prohibiting deployment of police officers to Haiti or any other country.”

The proposed Kenyan-led force was a bad idea anyway, so it is better that Kenya’s High Court stopped it before it could get started. A thousand police from a force with a checkered human rights record would not have helped Haiti restore order. The Kenyan government is reportedly expected to appeal the decision, but at this point it seems very unlikely that the mission will go ahead with Kenyan participation. The proposed intervention in Haiti has been delayed for such a long time because no government has been willing to take the lead until Kenya volunteered, and it is hard to imagine any other government jumping at the chance to take their place.