UN expands Haiti arms embargo to all types of weapons

The UN Security Council is trying to ace down connected rising levels of pack unit successful Haiti by extending embargo connected weapons.

The UN Security Council has voted unanimously to grow its arms embargo successful Haiti due to the fact that of sedate concerns implicit highly precocious levels of pack violence.

The embargo volition widen to each types of arms and ammunition successful the Caribbean country, which faces aggregate challenges.

The solution authorises the 193 UN subordinate nations to instrumentality “appropriate steps to forestall the illicit trafficking and diversion of arms and related materiel successful Haiti”.

The solution besides extends a question prohibition and plus frost connected pack members and criminals connected its blacklist.

Haiti has faced years of instability, but the concern has worsened since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise. It created a powerfulness vacuum which accrued the power of equipped gangs. It is estimated they present power up to 80 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

It means illicit weapons travel unchecked into the country. The resulting surge successful rapes, killings and kidnappings has led to a emergence of civilian vigilante groups.

US “straw men” root of weapons

Robert Muggah, the writer of a UN study connected Haiti’s guns and drugs trafficking and laminitis of the Brazil-based deliberation tank, the Igarape Institute, spoke to Al Jazeera’s Jillian Kestler-D’Amours earlier this year.

He estimated the biggest root of amerciable firearms and ammunition is the United States

“Just implicit 50 percent of these were handguns and astir 37 percent consisted of rifles,” helium told Al Jazeera.

Often Haiti-bound weapons from the US are purchased by “straw men” – radical who bargain from licensed dealers but conceal they are for idiosyncratic else.

The UN solution adopted connected Friday besides encouraged the Haitian authorities to tighten up its borders to halt illicit trafficking.

The Security Council besides voted successful aboriginal October to widen the mandate of the Kenya-led multinational unit trying to assistance the Haitian National Police combat the gangs.

Source

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Al Jazeera and quality agencies