After over a year in preparation for deployment, a contingent of 20 Jamaica Defence Force personnel and four from the Jamaica Constabulary will set boots on the ground in Haiti come Thursday as part of a multinational security force.

The move is the latest in a series since Prime Minister Andrew Holness in January last year said Jamaica stood ready to send members of the security forces to Haiti as part of an international effort aimed at restoring stability to the violence-torn French-speaking Caribbean nation.

Making the announcement during Tuesday’s post-Cabinet press briefing at Jamaica House in St Andrew, the prime minister said the personnel while in Haiti will “provide, command, planning and logistics support”.

Holness, who is in charge of the defence portfolio, said “the security forces continue in a state of readiness to support further deployment towards our overall commitment as the mission in Haiti is scaled up” while noting that “this is a buildup, no country has deployed all at once, it is a start to what we intend to do”.

“We were the first to commit personnel on the basis that any multinational security mission must have the support of the Haitian people, the appropriate jurisdictional sanction and must be adequately resourced,” Holness said.

The prime minister, in supplying the rationale for the decision, said it is in Jamaica’s “best interest to support a long-lasting resolution to the problems” in the neighbouring territory.

“Jamaica has close fraternal ties to the people of Haiti and we stand in solidarity with them. Jamaica also has a national security interest in the situation in Haiti one of our closest neighbours,” Holness said, adding, “here in Jamaica we see the growing entrenchment of gangs who organise the production of armed violence with a view to economic gain, spreading terror in communities and weakening the State’s guarantee to citizens’ security.

“We see this as an evolving existential threat to law and order and the proper functioning of institutions of the state not only in Jamaica but in several countries across the region. The threat of gangs must not be viewed as only a citizen to citizen problem, where regular policing and the criminal justice system would be sufficient to address the problem. The threat is at a level in the region where gangs and the organised armed violence is a threat to the very State,” the prime minister said.

“Haiti is the example of what could happen if states and governments do not take the problem seriously and put in place the measures and resources necessary to bring the problem under control,” he added.

In the meantime, Chief of Defence Staff for the JDF Vice-Admiral Antonette Wemyss- Gorman said the army has been in preparation mode “for over a year once we got the indication that Jamaica was prepared to participate”.

“It takes a lot of planning. We have done our due diligence and we are at the stage now where we can deploy the persons we have committed to support the command element as the mission rolls out,” she said.

She told the briefing that the Jamaican contingent will be under the command of JDF Colonel Kevon Henry — the designated deputy commander of the overall mission.

“We are also ensuring that within the headquarters the Jamaican contingent will occupy key appointments to ensure that we bring our expertise and our interest in the mission to the foregoing in the headquarters,” Wemyss-Gorman said.

Haiti has been in turmoil since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021.

In the absence of a functioning State, gangs have filled the void with the capital Port-au-Prince being the centre of a horrific turf war in which there have been prolific kidnappings, many civilian deaths, and gang-rape of elderly people and children.

Supplies of food and fuel have also been disrupted by the gangsters.