The United Nations has substantiated all four sexual exploitation and abuse allegations levelled last year against the Gang Suppression Force in Haiti — a security mission staffed mainly by Kenyan police officers and soldiers who deployed there in June 2024.
The findings, contained in a UN report dated February 16 and first disclosed by Haiti’s AyiboPost, have put Kenya at the centre of an accountability crisis. The force Kenya spearheaded, now formally renamed the Gang Suppression Force, has more than 1,000 personnel drawn from Kenya, Jamaica, Belize, the Bahamas, Guatemala and El Salvador.
“All the allegations were found to be substantiated by investigations conducted by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,” UN Report, February 16, 2026
The report said it had referred the results to the force’s leaders for “appropriate investigation and remedial measures.” A spokesperson for the force declined to comment.
Crucially, the UN says its hands are tied. Because the Haiti operation is not a formal UN peacekeeping mission, the burden of prosecution lies elsewhere.
Further action on the cases was up to the force and the countries involved because the operation “was not a formal U.N. mission,” Marta Hurtado Gomez, UN Human Rights Commission spokesperson, to AyiboPost
That statement puts the spotlight squarely on Nairobi. Kenya supplies the majority of the force’s roughly 1,000 troops and was the driving force behind its creation. Haiti’s prime minister’s office said it was not immediately able to comment; the UN human rights commission did not respond to a request for comment.
A shadow from Haiti’s past
The revelations arrive with painful historical context. The earlier UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti, known as MINUSTAH and active from 2004 to 2017, was plagued by widespread sexual abuse and exploitation allegations — including cases involving child victims. Only a handful of peacekeepers were ever prosecuted by their home countries.
Critics fear history is repeating itself. The force was restructured in September 2025 to become larger, better resourced and more aggressive in targeting gang violence. An advance team from Chad, which has pledged 800 additional troops, arrived on Wednesday.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
With the UN referring the cases back to the contributing nations, Kenya’s government faces growing pressure to publicly account for the allegations and confirm whether any officers have been disciplined or recalled.
