Musings From Abroad

Financial difficulties may affect Kenyan-led police mission in Haiti

Published

1 month ago

September 9, 2024

To replace the current Kenya-led mission in Haiti, the United States of America and Ecuador have published a draft resolution requesting that the UN start preparing for a U.N. peacekeeping operation.

Since June, around 400 Kenyan police have been deployed as part of the U.N.-backed mission.

The United States diplomats stated that the Kenya-led mission, which is dependent on donations from the public, is experiencing financial difficulties and could consider using a U.N. peacekeeping force. Thus far, most of the funding has come from the United States and Canada. In contrast, money for peacekeeping efforts comes from a separate U.N. budget.

It won’t change anything if the proposed Security Council resolution lists the “achievements” of the multinational mission supported by the United Nations.

The state of emergency in Haiti was extended last week to include the whole country.

2017 saw the end of the last UN mission in Haiti. It was said to have caused a cholera outbreak by disposing of contaminated sewage into a river. Nine Haitian children were exploited by at least 134 UN personnel in a sex ring between 2004 and 2007, according to an internal UN investigation.

A 2004 revolt brought the nation dangerously close to collapse, prompting the United Nations to send in reinforcements. Following successful elections and a devastating 2010 earthquake that claimed up to 300,000 lives and ended in October 2017, it contributed to the stabilisation of the impoverished nation.

However, there was a cloud cast over U.N. forces when troops from Nepal were widely accused of bringing cholera, which has killed over 10,000 people in Haiti since 2010, and other troops were linked to sexual assault, including rape and the targeting of undernourished children.

The United Nations has operated several small operations in Haiti since 2017. A Haitian-led political process aimed at advancing elections, the rule of law, and human rights is the goal of the most recent political mission, BINUH.

Given the controversies surrounding the previous peacekeeping deployment, many Haitians have resisted the idea of another one. In addition, some Haitians view U.N. forces as an invading army.

In 2022, Haiti requested an international force to fight gangs, and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres pleaded for months for a nation to take the lead in organising the force before Kenya stepped up and offered 1,000 police.

Police from the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Benin, Chad, and Jamaica are anticipated to join them, expanding the global force to 2,500 members.

Musings From Abroad

Uganda signs contract with Yapi Merkezi to develop rail

Published

12 hours ago

October 14, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

The Ugandan government and Turkish construction company, Yapi Merkezi, inked a contract on Monday to build a 272-kilometer (169-mile) stretch of railway, an official from Uganda stated.

Perez Wamburu, the project coordinator for Uganda’s Standard Gauge Railway, stated that the agreement covered the first phase of a 1,700 km electrified train line, costing 2.7 billion euros ($3 billion).

According to Wamburu, work on the project will begin in November.

At the signing event, Bageya Waiswa, the permanent secretary of Uganda’s works ministry, stated that the project will boost trade and lower transportation costs.

He stated that Uganda will finance the project, which will take 48 months to finish once it is underway, using both its own money and loans from export credit institutions.

The rail segment will connect landlocked Uganda to its neighbour’s rail network at the Kenyan border, Malaba, and eventually the Indian Ocean seaport of Mombasa. It will stretch from the capital, Kampala, to this location.

Uganda and China Harbour and Engineering Company Ltd. (CHEC) reached an agreement in 2015 to carry out the project, provided that CHEC assisted in obtaining funding for the railway from the Chinese government.

Uganda ended the deal last year and started negotiations with Yapi Merkezi, which is working on a project identical to this in adjacent Tanzania, after years of failed negotiations.

Musings From Abroad

Russia’s Wagner claims to have recovered bodies of its mercenaries from July deadly attack

Published

4 days ago

October 10, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

The Wagner mercenary outfit from Russia announced that its forces had found the bodies of its mercenaries who were slain in a confrontation with Islamists and Tuareg rebels in July in the Mali desert sandstorm.

An Islamist insurgency that has been raging for years in Mali, where military authorities took control in coups in 2020 and 2021, originated from a Tuareg separatist revolt in the country’s north of the Sahel.

In July, Wagner stated that it suffered significant losses in the conflict, which it fought with the Malian military, but did not provide many specifics.

“An operation was completed to return the bodies of our brothers, who in July 2024 heroically took up the fight with Islamists many times outnumbered,” Wagner said in a rare statement on Telegram late on Tuesday.

The July battle’s defeat highlighted the risks faced by Russian mercenary forces used by military juntas, which are fighting to rein in rebels and potent branches of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in the parched Sahel of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger.

The army of Mali announced in a statement that it had also located and removed the soldiers’ bodies from the scene of the July attack.

Wagner stated that the rebel group had recovered the combatants’ bodies, but a spokesman for the group refuted this.

“It’s not true, there are no Wagner bodies there,” Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane, a spokesman for a Tuareg organisation known as the Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security and Development, told journalists.

He said on social media on Sunday that shortly after the battle, the rebels removed the Wagner bodies from the area.

The assertions follow a pattern of contradictory statements: last week, the rebels maintained that both of their fighters who were seized in Mali were still alive, but Wagner said that two of them had passed away.

According to Wagner, its fighters had traversed a desolate region “teeming with Azawad militants” close to Tinzaouaten in north Mali.

“The bodies of our fallen brothers will return to the homeland,” Wagner said. “We do not leave our own, and all of them – dead or alive – will be returned home.”