Haiti: Canada Trains Soldiers in Belize for Mission

On Sunday, official sources stated that Canada is training soldiers in Belize who will be part of the so-called Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti, where the national police force is currently unable to control the violence that overshadows the Caribbean country.

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According to United Nations sources in this Caribbean country, the list is made up of 50 soldiers from the Belize Defense Force, who will join other squadrons from different latitudes to complete the 1,000 men, not all of whom will be directly involved in the tasks of confronting the gangs.

Previously, the Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), António Guterres, encouraged member states to support the multinational support force approved by the Security Council for Haiti.

Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN chief, said: "we hope that member states that can contribute in kind or in cash will do so."

The tweet reads, "The majority of weapons discovered at crime scenes in Haiti come from the United States, according to U.S. Department of Justice reports released in 2012, 2016 and 2019."

For her part, the head of the UN Mission here, María Isabel Salvador, assured that Haiti is reporting an unprecedented increase in kidnappings, rapes and other crimes committed by armed gangs.

This, she said, is increasingly affecting people's livelihoods and undermining humanitarian activities.

Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Ghada Waly, warned that in the current context it is more important than ever to take all possible measures to prevent illicit flows from further destabilizing Haiti.

He specified that in the last three months of 2023, that Office detected 11 informal or clandestine airstrips in Haiti, which represent a blind spot possibly used by traffickers and smugglers to fly to the United States.

"Our findings show that a relatively small number of Haitian gangs, such as the 5 Segond and 400 Mawozo groups, specialized in the acquisition, storage and distribution of weapons and ammunition," Waly also warned.

These groups move firearms from entry points to their strongholds before distributing or selling them to other armed groups.