Kenya enlists evangelical pastors to guide Haiti mission

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In the months leading up to Kenya’s deployment of police officers to Haiti, President William Ruto has consulted political advisers, security officials and foreign leaders about the high-profile anti-gang mission.

He also turned to less conventional counsellors: a circle of Christian evangelical pastors close to him and his wife.

The pastors have issued recommendations to Ruto and served as a conduit between Haitian communities and the president, according to interviews with two of the pastors and three Haitian and American evangelical leaders.

Spokespeople for President Ruto and his wife, Rachel, did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

The pastors’ efforts ahead of the deployment, due to begin later this month, have included meetings with Haitians in the United States, as well as evangelical counterparts, US government officials and even Haiti’s most notorious gang leader, Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier.

“We believe that we are a tool that God will use to help,” said Serge Musasilwa, an evangelical pastor in Kenya involved in the initiative. A sociologist by training, Musasilwa said he has worked on conflict resolution in his native Democratic Republic of Congo and several other African countries.

People involved in the initiative say the relationships forged with Haitian communities will help the Kenyan-led multinational force avoid the mistakes of foreign interventions in Haiti in recent decades.

Besides failing to stabilise Haiti, those missions left behind legacies of human rights abuses and disease, most infamously a cholera outbreak believed to have been introduced by Nepali UN peacekeepers in 2010.

A UN-appointed panel concluded a peacekeepers’ camp was the likely source of the cholera epidemic, which killed about 10 000 Haitians. The UN has not accepted legal responsibility.

“The more you’re connected to the population, the more you can format the kind of intervention you’re going to lead,” said Daniel Jean-Louis, the president of the Baptist Haiti Mission, which has worked with the Kenyan pastors.

“This is one of the reasons why all the previous missions failed.”

The UN has said it left the country relatively stable when a 13-year peacekeeping mission withdrew from Haiti in 2017. A UN peacekeeping spokesperson said the mission had worked in close partnership with civil society and community-based organisations to reduce violence and improve municipal governance.

Not everyone is convinced by the Kenyan pastors’ strategy. Evangelicals themselves have a complex history in Haiti, where they have poured resources into humanitarian projects but also faced criticism for ethical scandals, including alleged child trafficking by some missionaries after a devastating 2010 earthquake, and for preaching intolerance of local spiritual practices.

Pierre Espérance, Executive Director of the National Human Rights Defence Network in Haiti, said Kenya should stick to its security mandate, calling the outreach to gang leaders an insult to their victims.

“It’s not a question of the gospel (or) praying with gangs that will resolve problems,” he told Reuters.

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