The Caribbean is awash with illegal American guns

On October 2ndUN the Security Council authorised a Kenyan-led multinational security force to go to Haiti. The mission, to last for a year, was first requested by Ariel Henry, Haiti’s acting prime minister, in 2022. Mr Henry’s request, in turn, came a year after the assassination of Jovenel Moïse, then the president, in July 2021. For two years the small Caribbean country has been racked by violence and without an elected government. Around 200 gangs operate in the country with near-total impunity. Starvation is commonplace. Some 3,000 people are reported to have been murdered this year alone, though that is probably a small fraction of the actual total. Kenya will send 1,000 troops to help Haiti’s embattled police force.Haiti is an extreme example, but violence is rising across much of the Caribbean. The region, which consists of independent states as well as overseas territories of Britain, the United States, the Netherlands and France, has long been a hotspot for criminal activity, because of its strategic position between the coca-producing countries of South America and the drug-consuming markets of North America and Europe. That is especially true of the 15 developing countries in Caricom, a regional intergovernmental organisation.