US freezes funding for security mission tackling Haiti's gangs

UNITED NATIONS: More than $13 million in U.S. funding for an international security force helping fight armed gangs in Haiti has been frozen under President Donald Trump's 90-day pause on foreign aid, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

Powerful gangs, armed with weapons largely trafficked from the United States, have united in the Caribbean country's capital Port-au-Prince under a common alliance and now control most of the city and are expanding to nearby areas.

The Multinational Security Support mission, while approved by the U.N. Security Council, is not a United Nations operation and currently relies on voluntary contributions. The mission has so far made little progress toward helping Haiti restore order.

There are nearly 900 police and troops from Kenya, El Salvador, Jamaica, Guatemala and Belize. More than $110 million has been paid into a U.N. trust fund for the mission, more than half of it from Canada, according to U.N. data.

"The U.S. had committed $15 million to the trust fund; $1.7 million of that had already been spent, so $13.3 million is now frozen," U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters. "We received an official notification from the U.S. asking for an immediate stop work order on their contribution."

Just hours after taking office on Jan. 20, Trump ordered a 90-day pause so foreign aid contributions could be reviewed to see if they align with his "America First" foreign policy.

Korir Sing'oei, the principal secretary at Kenya's foreign affairs ministry, said that despite the freeze, there was enough money in the trust fund to underwrite the mission through the end of September.

“We are very confident that any freeze would not impair our ability to be able to continue with this mission," he told Reuters, adding he was hopeful the MSS would soon be converted to a U.N. peacekeeping mission, which would make it eligible for direct U.N. funding.

The Trump administration has not yet said whether it supports making the MSS a U.N. mission, and China and Russia have opposed doing so.

Trump said on Tuesday he thinks he will wind down the U.S. Agency for International Development, in what would be a dramatic overhaul of how the world's largest single donor allocates foreign assistance.