According to Guterres, the troops should support the police in restoring order on the island. Haiti is struggling with a virtually stagnant economy and food and fuel shortages. The latter are caused by a coalition of criminal gangs blocking the main fuel terminal on the island for a month.
The lack of gas and diesel has paralyzed transportation and forced businesses and hospitals to shut down. As a result, there is also a shortage of bottled water, just as there have been indications for a week that the country is facing a new cholera outbreak. In 2010, Haiti, then free of cholera, suffered a massive outbreak of the disease. At the time, 50,000 people became ill and more than 9,300 died.
UN peacekeepers were sent to Haiti in 2004 after an insurgency led to the ouster and exile of then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The peacekeepers left in 2017 and were replaced by the UN police, who left in 2019.