Photo Credit: Refugees International/ Peter Gantz
02/18/2005

A UN Civilian Police (CIVPOL) truck patrols in Gonaives. Their mandate is to assist with the restoration and maintenance of law and order in Haiti by providing operational support, such as being present in police stations and patrolling alongside Haitian National Police (HNP) officers and mentoring and providing advice to the HNP. This mandate, however, assumes that there is a functioning institution to which CIVPOL can provide operational support, but the HNP is ill-equipped to police Haiti. There are insufficient numbers of police vehicles; the HNP lack communications equipment, and many police stations remain in ruins from the political violence of 2004. From a high of around 9,000 police officers in 1999, the HNP now has around 3,000 officers, some of whom have never been officially vetted and whose credentials are suspect.

RI believes that the mandate for the UN peacekeeping force in Haiti should be amended to allow CIVPOL to perform active police functions. This would allow CIVPOL to do more than passively advise and mentor an essentially dysfunctional institution.