PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Sept 23, (AP): As world leaders meeting in the United Nations this week discuss the future of efforts to rein in the gangs strangling Haiti, Haitians are expressing hopelessness that an international response can turn the tide of violence. Thus far, a UN-backed force of 400 police from Kenya and about two dozen Jamaican officers have done little to quell the country's gangs, which have terrorized the country since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

World leaders have been discussing the next steps in a convoluted efforts to restore order to the Caribbean nation, and Kenya this weekend pledged 600 more officers. The United States has floated the idea of a UN peacekeeping force, but the idea was considered too controversial given the introduction of cholera and sexual abuse cases that occurred the last time UN troops were in Haiti.

The deployment of Kenyan forces was, in part, to avoid tensions that may be sparked by sending another UN peacekeeping mission. But in a visit to Haiti by Kenya's President William Ruto over the weekend - on his way to the United Nations General Assembly session, which began on Sunday - Ruto said he would be open to expanding Kenya's operations into a larger UN peacekeeping mission.

"On the suggestion to transit this into a fully UN Peacekeeping mission, we have absolutely no problem with it, if that is the direction the UN security council wants to take,” Ruto said. While Ruto hailed the successes of the Kenyan forces on Sunday, a recent report by a UN human rights expert said gang violence is spreading across Haiti and that Haitian police still lack the "logistical and technical capacity” to fight gangs. The ongoing violence has left Haitians like 39-year-old Mario Canteve disillusioned with further international efforts to quell the gangs, saying he no longer believes promises by world leaders that they'll be able to change anything in the crisis-stricken nation.