The UN Security Council voted unanimously on Friday to reduce the number of UN peacekeeping troops and police in Haiti and bring the force closer to its level before the earthquake devastated the impoverished Caribbean nation in January last year.
“The overall security situation, while fragile, has improved,” the council’s resolution said, while extending the UN force’s mandate for another year.
Council members backed a recommendation by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to reduce the mission’s current authorized military strength of 8,940 to 7,340 troops, and its international police force from 4,391 to 4,241 officers.
The UN force had an authorized strength of 6,940 troops and 2,211 police before the quake devastated Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas, killing an estimated 230,000 to 300,000 people and destroying more than 100,000 buildings.
In extending the mandate of the UN force until Oct. 15 next year, the council said it was playing a “critical role .... in ensuring stability and security in Haiti.”
While Haiti has made considerable strides since the quake, the UN Security Council said criminal gangs remain a threat to the country’s stability.
“Trends since the earthquake reveal an increase in all major categories of crime, including murder, rape and kidnapping in Port-au-Prince” and the western province, whose capital, Jacmel, was also ravaged by the quake, the council said.
It said sexual and gender-based violence also remains a serious concern in poor districts of Port-au-Prince, camps for internally displaced people and remote areas of the country.
The UN force has helped keep order in Haiti since 2004, when political violence engulfed the country.
Haitian President Michel Martelly asked for a renewal of the UN mission’s mandate, which remains unpopular among some Haitians.
Last month, protesters calling for the withdrawal of UN peacekeepers clashed with police outside the earthquake--damaged Haitian National Palace in Port-au-Prince.
Protesters said they were angry over the alleged sexual assault of an 18-year-old Haitian man by UN peacekeepers from Uruguay in the southwestern town of Port-Salut in July.
They also expressed anger over a cholera outbreak likely introduced by a battalion from Nepal. The outbreak has killed more than 6,200 people since it surfaced in October last year, according to the Health Ministry.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS