By Sarah Morland
(Reuters) – The United Nations Security Council on Thursday renewed for one year its sanctions regime on Haiti, which currently includes just one individual, as Haiti and China called for faster action.
A year ago, the council slapped sanctions on Jimmy Cherizier, alias “Barbecue,” a former police officer turned leader of the G9 Alliance and one of Haiti’s most powerful gang leaders.
“This situation of only one person on the designated list must be changed as soon as possible,” said China’s deputy U.N. Ambassador Geng Shuang. “We urge the sanctions committee to speed up its work and meet the resolution’s requirements.”
Shuang also called on “all countries, especially regional states” to “take concrete actions” to prevent the illegal flow of small arms and light weapons into Haiti in order to cut off gangs’ sources of weapons.
Many Caribbean leaders have pointed to the United States as the source of illegal firearms flooding the region.
Haitian gangs have amassed what national police have described as an “arsenal of war” including stocks of machine guns and assault rifles, threatening residents caught up in the fighting and the country’s under-resourced police.
Earlier this month, the U.N. authorized deployment of a multinational force to Haiti to aid police, as requested by Haiti’s unelected government a year ago. The resolution also expanded an arms embargo to include all gangs in the country.
Haiti’s U.N. Ambassador Antonio Rodrigue commended the vote while calling on nations to be more proactive in combating arms trafficking.
“We are very much looking forward to the publication of the list of the main protagonists linked to the worsening security crisis in the country,” Rodrigue said, urging the U.N. to take action on the many resolutions it has passed.
“There is now a need to move to the active phase,” he said. “Work will be judged in the light of specific results obtained on the ground.”
(Reporting by Sarah Morland; editing by Jonathan Oatis)