Overview:
Haiti has passed the halfway mark in its effort to train 4,000 police officers, according to Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé. The P4000 initiative is a central part of the government’s attempt to strengthen the Haitian National Police as gangs continue to challenge state control and international forces remain below their planned strength.
Haiti has trained more than 2,000 police officers this year under the government’s P4000 initiative, putting it more than halfway toward its goal of training 4,000 officers by the end of the year, Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé said during high-level talks on Haiti at the United Nations on Sept. 24.
The accelerated training is part of the government’s effort to rapidly increase the capacity of the Haitian National Police (PNH) as it confronts heavily armed gangs and works alongside an international security force that has yet to reach its planned strength.
“Haiti’s security must ultimately rest on the capabilities of the Haitian state. This is why we are acting now. We are hiring, we are training, we are overhauling the doctrine of our army,” Fils-Aimé said. “Through the P4000 program, we are continuing to train 4,000 police officers this year.”
Another police class is expected to graduate in November, Fils-Aimé said.
Fils-Aimé has presented the accelerated training effort as part of a broader strategy to rebuild Haiti’s ability to provide its own security, particularly ahead of the December elections, the first in a decade.
“To see the electoral process through to the end, we must guarantee the security conditions necessary for holding the elections,” he said. “Security makes voting possible, voting restores legitimacy, and legitimacy paves the way for stability.”
The government says international security support remains necessary while Haitian forces are being strengthened.
“International support is indispensable today,” Fils-Aimé said. “At the same time, Haiti’s security must ultimately rest on the capabilities of the Haitian state.”
The push to expand PNH comes as Haiti is relying on a mix of Haitian, international and other security efforts to regain territory from armed groups.
The U.N.-authorized Gang Suppression Force, or GSF, is intended to operate alongside PNH and the Armed Forces of Haiti, but it has yet to reach its planned strength of 5,500 personnel. At the Sept. 24 meeting, Fils-Aimé called for the force’s mandate to be renewed and for its full deployment, including the equipment and resources needed for operations.
The Haitian government has also used private security support in its anti-gang operations. U.N. human rights reporting has documented drone strikes supported by a private military company as part of security operations.
Fils-Aimé’s figure measures officers trained. It does not, by itself, show that the PNH has increased its active workforce by more than 2,000 officers. However, he did announce a larger expansion of Haiti’s military, saying more than 1,500 new soldiers have already been trained and that his government is launching a program to train 15,000 additional soldiers over the next three years.
“The main aim is to ensure that Haiti is equipped with forces—national army forces, defense forces—that would be at the top level to protect our civilians and our people,” said Haiti Defense Minister Mario Andresol.
The training push comes as gang violence has displaced about 1.5 million people across Haiti, leaving the country’s expanding security forces to confront a crisis that has uprooted roughly one in eight Haitians.
