El Salvador's congress approves sending troop contingent to Haiti

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — El Salvador’s Congress approved a proposal Wednesday to send a contingent of soldiers to Haiti under the auspices of the United Nations to handle medical evacuations in the troubled Caribbean nation.

Patricia Aguilera, legal affairs director for El Salvador’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, told lawmakers it was part of the country’s commitment to the U.N.’s Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti.

She did not give an idea of the size of the El Salvador contingent and lawmakers did not seem to know. They would be limited to medical evacuations because that has been their experience in other U.N. missions, she said.

“As a country, we are an example of security on an international level and that is why we provide support, but specifically for medical evacuations, that is our experience,” Aguilera said.

Haiti has been in extended political and economic turmoil.

Earlier this year, coordinated gang attacks forced the government to close Haiti’s main international airport for nearly three months.

In recent days gang violence has spread in the capital of Port-au-Prince. The attacks have displaced more than 10,000 people in the capital in just one week, according to a report released last week by the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration.

Concerns have been raise that a U.N.-backed mission led by Kenyan police is struggling to contain the unrest. Thousands of people have been killed or injured this year, and more than 700,000 have been left homeless in recent years.

Haitian officials have requested that the underfunded Kenyan mission be replaced by a U.N. peacekeeping force.

El Salvador is a signatory to an agreement through the Organization of American States to support the Haiti mission. El Salvador’s troop commitment runs to October 2025. It was not clear when the troop contingent would travel to Haiti.

In March, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele offered to export his security model to Haiti. Bukele has touted his administration’s success in decimating the country’s powerful street gangs. To do so a state of emergency has been in place for more than two years suspending some civil rights. More than 83,000 alleged gang members have been arrested.

Homicides in El Salvador have plummeted and residents in many neighborhoods once controlled by gangs say they feel safe in their streets.