140 Police peacekeepers leave for Haiti mission

The Rwanda National Police has sent 140 officers to Haiti for a UN peacekeeping mission under the Formed Police Unit.The officers, including 14 women, will be in the Central American island for the next one year. They will replace their 160 colleagues who have since completed their tour of duty of a similar duration and are deployed at the Haitian town of Jeremie.The peacekeepers were seen off by the Force’s top brass led by Inspector-General of Police Emmanuel Gasana.Before the plane took off, the Commissioner for Public Relations and Community Policing, Theos Badege, urged the peacekeepers to hoist the country’s flag high during their assignment in the far-flung country, saying they should be good ambassadors.“You have to maintain discipline and work hard for the benefit of Haitians to ensure that by the time you complete your tour of duty, they are better off than how you found them,” he said.Apart from safeguarding the nationals, the officers also engage in developmental activities such as community work, building capacity of the Haitian Police as well as rallying the youth in various areas of development.Badege said more officers are being prepared to be deployed in parts of Mali, where Rwanda’s Maj. Gen. John Bosco Kazura was recently named a Force Commander of a newly-formed UN peacekeeping mission there. The country is the sixth leading troop contributor to UN peacekeeping missions, with more than 3,200 troops in the UN African Union Hybrid Mission in Darfur, and 850 with UNMISS in South Sudan.The country also maintains about 500 Police officers in peacekeeping missions in Haiti, Liberia, Sierra Leon, Sudan, South Sudan and Cote d’Ivoire. Formed Police Unit are rapidly deployable, well-equipped and trained to act as a cohesive body capable of responding to a range of contingencies. They are self-sufficient, able to operate in “high-risk” environments and are deployed to accomplish policing duties such as crowd control rather than to respond to military threats. About HaitiThe Republic of Haiti is a Caribbean nation with a population of about 9.8 million. A recent Human Development Index ranked Haiti as the poorest country in the Americas. Political violence has occurred regularly throughout its history, leading to instability. In February 2004, a coup d’état originating in the north of the country forced the resignation and exile of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The island has had a history of destructive earthquakes. A 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, 2010, and devastated Port-au-Prince, with a death toll of 220,000 people.