Three of the four siblings in Lea Kilenga’s family were born with sickle cell, including Lea. Her eldest sister passed away from the disease when she was just 4 years old. Kilenga herself was told that she would not live beyond her 8th birthday.

Sickle cell is an inherited and debilitating blood disorder that causes normal round red blood cells – which carry oxygen through the body – to become crescent-shaped and rigid. These misshapen cells can block blood flow to vital organs and lead to serious complications, including stroke, blood clots, anemia, and bouts of extreme pain.

“You’re frequently in pain. And they say by the time you’re 40 you have at least one organ that is extensively damaged,” said Kilenga, who grew up in Taveta, Kenya. “(The disease) is something that I would not wish for anyone.”

Of the 120 million people worldwide living with sickle cell, more than 66% are in Africa. Despite the prevalence, treatment to relieve pain and prevent complications is difficult to secure, and stigma against the disease is widespread, even associated with witchcraft in rural areas.

“Sickle cell affects more lower resource communities where there’s a large financial burden to access medicine and health care,” Kilenga said.

Kilenga has fought her whole life to overcome the challenges of living with the disease, and she is on a mission to help thousands of other sickle cell patients get the medical care they need to lead fulfilling lives. Through her nonprofit, Africa Sickle Cell Organization, she is breaking down stigmas and bringing treatment that was once only available in wealthy Western countries to sub-Saharan Africa.

Growing up with sickle cell

As a child, Kilenga was ostracized for having sickle cell. She first encountered the stigma around the disease in grade school when other children treated her differently, not wanting to sit next to her or touch her because they thought she was contagious.

“My parents protected us from stressors, educated themselves, and allowed us to grow and to thrive,” Kilenga said. “The challenges we faced in a home of people living with sickle cell was the merry-go-round of pain and hospitals and medicine. It was how we grew up.”

After graduating from university, Kilenga decided to travel the country taking photographs of people with sickle cell and interviewing them and their families about their struggles with it. Initially, she planned to photograph and interview 10,000 people. But after the horrors she encountered on the project, she stopped at 400.

She found sick children locked in rooms, crying incessantly for help yet ignored by family members who had no idea what to do. Kilenga said so many families had no understanding of how to care for their sick children and thought it would be better to let them die. The people she met throughout Kenya didn’t have access to any medical care or pain management. There were 4-year-old children who looked 1 year old because of poor growth development from a lack of treatment.

“When I went on the ground, the reality was worse than I could have imagined,” Kilenga said. “I could no longer do it because it was just so sad. I decided I had to share this pain with someone who could do something about it.”

Creating a new normal

Kilenga contacted the Director of Noncommunicable Diseases at Kenya’s Ministry of Health.

“I met with him. He was a lovely gentleman. He told me he was inspired by the photographs and the stories and we should plan a time where we can speak more about it,” Kilenga said.

She waited one month, two months, three months, and never heard back. She tried calling his office, emailing, and got no response. So, she began to email him a daily portrait and story of someone living with sickle cell from her project.

That got his attention. Finally, he responded, and together they worked to raise $20,000 to form a set of national guidelines in Kenya for the management and control of sickle cell disease.

Yet with health care in Kenya decentralized and delegated to the county governments, to really affect change for people with sickle cell, she was advised by the Ministry to start in one part of the country that had a budget to implement sickle cell care.

In 2017, Kilenga moved from Nairobi to a small village in the southern part of Taita-Taveta County. The area is plagued by a lack of access to clean water, food, health care, and education. There is also an alarmingly high prevalence of sickle cell in the region.

That year, Kilenga started Africa Sickle Cell Organization and has since helped 500,000 people. She provides access to treatment by offering health insurance, establishing specialized clinics, and educating medical professionals and communities about the disease.

Connecting patients with clinics

The organization onboards patients for health insurance based on need and their resources. Then they place them in care and link them with the closest sickle cell facility.

She and her group work in tandem with the government, outside organizations, and funders to sustain and create clinics that specialize in sickle cell maintenance and treatment. They identify providers who can plug in the gaps in care and financing to expand access for patients.

“We’re talking about inpatient and outpatient care, meaning when they are hospitalized everything is covered,” Kilenga said. “Clinics, labs, medicines, and anything else healthcare providers are giving are covered by the package.”

The organization currently supports four clinics in Kenya that serve 2,000 patients, Kilenga said. Patients usually come once a week or twice a month to see clinicians, get diagnostics, and monitor blood levels.

After six months in treatment, patients are enrolled in the organization’s program to support their livelihood, such as raising goats and chickens.

“What I’ve realized is you can give people medicines and access to care, and you can educate them all that you want,” Kilenga said. “But if they don’t have the basics like food, clean water, shelter, then you will not realize the outcomes that you want for them.”

Opening hearts and minds

Kilenga is also focused on creating community awareness to help end the stigma of sickle cell.

“In most communities, when your children have sickle cell, most blame the woman … and the woman is abandoned and left to (take) care of the children. And the community stigmatizes them to a point that they are so poor and destitute that they cannot ask for a job, or ask for help, because they have been shunned by their families,” Kilenga said.

Kilenga travels to villages and speaks with village elders, chiefs, parents, and community members to educate them about sickle cell.

“It’s an interactive session. I think this is one of the biggest tools that we use for elimination of stigma and education around sickle cell in communities,” Kilenga said.

“Those with sickle cell have been neglected, and I think this neglect has made them think that they don’t deserve good things. I need them to know that sickle cell is not just what they are. It’s a fraction of a fraction of their life, and they have so much more to do.”

Want to get involved? Check out the Africa Sickle Cell Organization website and see how to help.

To donate to Africa Sickle Cell Organization via GoFundMe, click here

On Tuesday morning, as Abdallah stood on a dusty street in northern Gaza amid the debris of bombed buildings, he received a call he had waited nine months for.

After nine months kept apart by war, his children were on their way to him.

“During those nine months, each day lasted nine years,” said Abdallah, whose last name was withheld by UNICEF to protect his identity and those of his family members.

Ten days after the war started, Abdallah’s pregnant wife and three children fled to the south of the Gaza Strip seeking safety. But two months ago, his wife, mother-in-law and one of his sons were killed.

“I have been eagerly awaiting them. Every day I yearned to hug them, see their mother and their brother. But that was God’s will. Their mother was martyred and so was their brother. I pray God will reunite me with the rest of my children safely,” he said.

When Abdallah finally held his youngest son in his arms Tuesday, it was the first time he had ever met him.

Abdallah’s children were returned to his care as a part of a reunification program run by UNICEF in Gaza, which helped seven children from four different families find their parents again on Tuesday alone.

The program has been running since March, and its mission is to track down relatives of unaccompanied children who have been orphaned or become lost or separated from their family in the strip, where the burden of Israel’s war against Hamas is weighing particularly heavily on Gaza’s youngest.

Family members are stepping up to provide care where they can despite repeated displacements. One of the children involved in Tuesday’s UNICEF mission was reunited with his grandmother, who will now take care of him after his mother, father and siblings were killed.

Israel’s repeated evacuation orders and the resultant forced displacement of populations are also causing spikes in reports of child abuse, as families are torn apart and support networks break down, according to Liz Allcock, head of protection at Medical Aid for Palestinians, an aid organization based in the United Kingdom.

Site visits to displacement camps in Gaza, led by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in June, documented a “significant number” of unaccompanied and separated children. OCHA’s Inter-Cluster Coordination Group – which oversees groups within OCHA working on matters like food security, protection issues and health – coordinated the visits.

In one camp, community members raised concerns about an “alarming” increase in child exploitation and abuse, as well as gender-based violence, one assessment published online said. Other sites across the strip have also reported incidents of child labor and “rising concerns” about child exploitation.

It’s not known exactly how many children in Gaza are unaccompanied or separated, according to UNICEF. But using analysis of other global conflicts, the organization estimates that this population stands at around 19,000 children.

That number doesn’t consider that Gaza has a high population of children, however. Nor does it consider the large proportion of extended family in Gaza that are stepping up and looking after many children whose parents are killed. UNICEF is unable to verify exact numbers due to a lack of access into Gaza.

‘It’s very common for families to get separated’

Abdallah’s experience of being reunited with his children is not the norm in war-torn Gaza.

Child protection agencies face an uphill struggle to reunite unaccompanied and separated children with their families, according to Jessica Dixon, who coordinates child protection efforts in Gaza and West Bank for UNICEF.

“It’s very common for families to get separated. Crossing the checkpoints – from north to south, across Wadi Gaza – lots of people are being taken into detention. That’s been another cause of family separation.” Wadi Gaza is a strip of wetlands bisecting the enclave.

Agencies like UNICEF are working hard to identify and support children at risk of exploitation, particularly unaccompanied and separated children, she said.

But there are many operational constraints restricting their efforts and more information is needed about unaccompanied and separated children living in displacement camps, she added.

“There is a huge lack of access. There is a lack of security, a lack of communications,” she said. “Phone networks are so difficult, to get hold of different people and for service providers to make contact with different families.”

For now, aid organizations are doing what they can to try to reunite children with their families.

On UNICEF’s recent reunification trip, the organization created identification bracelets to give to children in case they become separated from their parents – hoping to make Abdallah’s experience one shared by many others in the strip.

A passenger plane carrying 62 people crashed on the outskirts of São Paulo on Friday, according to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, with dramatic footage from the scene showing the plane’s destroyed fuselage in flames on the ground.

Interrupting a speech at a naval event, Lula said it “appears” that everyone on board the flight may have died. It is not clear what caused the twin-engine turboprop plane to crash.

“I would like everyone to stand up so that we can observe a minute of silence because a plane has just crashed in the city of Vinhedo, in São Paulo, with 58 passengers and 4 crew members and it appears they all died,” he said, in a video of his statement shared on X.

Flight 2283 left Cascavel, in the Brazilian state of Parana, and was en route to São Paulo when it lost signal shortly before 1:30 p.m. local time (12:30 p.m. ET), according to data on Flightradar24.

Social media videos of the crash showed the plane spiraling out of the sky before hitting the ground as people in the neighborhood shouted in fear. Another video showed the wreckage of the plane in flames on the ground.

“There is still no confirmation of how the accident occurred or the current situation of the people on board,” according to a statement by airline Voepass.

She ducked down in terror and started praying, she said, calling it a “moment of panic” for the whole city. The private roads leading toward the crash site are now closed off, and first responders are in the area, she said.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Police in the Nigerian capital Abuja are investigating the killing of a trans TikToker known as Abuja Area Mama after her body was found beside a highway.

On TikTok, where she identified as female and openly described herself as a sex worker, Abuja Area Mama styled herself as a “cross-dresser and queen of the street.”

A police spokesperson in the city, Josephine Adeh, said in a statement that “an unidentified lady was seen lying motionless along Katampe – Mabushi expressway” on Thursday and “preliminary investigations revealed that the individual was a man fully dressed in female clothing with no means of identification on him.”

Same-sex relations are banned in Nigeria and gay and trans people often face harrasment.

Abuja Area Mama had previously faced attacks and harassment. In a recent video on social media, she described being stabbed by an unidentified man.

A day before her body was found, she made a post on Instagram saying she was “getting ready to go and see my boyfriend.”

Abuja Area Mama was candid about the risks of being a sex worker.

“You could leave home at night to hustle and not return the next morning,” she said while featuring as a guest on a YouTube podcast four months ago.

Refugee athlete Manizha Talash was disqualified from the B-Girl breaking competition at the Olympics for wearing a cape with the words “Free Afghan Women” during her breaking battle on Friday.

The 21-year-old, who fled Afghanistan after the Taliban began seizing control in 2021, now lives in Spain and represents the Refugee Team at the games as B-girl Talash.

As she made her debut during the pre-qualifier battle, Talash revealed a baby blue cape under her jumper emblazoned with the words calling for Afghan women’s emancipation.

World DanceSport Federation, which governs the sport, issued a statement later on Friday saying “B-Girl TALASH (EOR) was disqualified for displaying a political slogan on her attire during the Pre-Qualifier battle. Results have been updated accordingly.”

“I didn’t leave Afghanistan because I’m afraid of the Taliban or because I can’t live in Afghanistan,” Talash said before action got underway. “I left because I want to do what I can for the girls in Afghanistan, for my life, my future, for everyone.”

Under Taliban rule, Afghanistan became the most repressive country in the world for women’s rights, according to the United Nations. The hardline Islamist group has closed secondary schools for girls, banned women from attending university, restricted their travel without a male chaperone, and banned them from public spaces such as parks and gyms.

The Taliban’s so-called morality police have also disproportionately targeted women and girls, creating a “climate of fear and intimidation,” according to a UN report published last month.

Talash found the sport of breaking through watching videos on social media. Her ability to train, however, was disrupted as she looked for somewhere to settle.

The breaker became one of 37 athletes representing the Refugee Olympic Team in Paris, and is proud to do so.

“All refugees have a very difficult life, but they will go to the Games,” she said. “So to me, to be part of the team, it means strength.” She added: “People from my country and also girls would tell me: ‘You need to learn how to cook and clean the house.’

Breaking has been flourishing on the streets of New York and other US cities since the 1970s, but Paris marks its first time its athletes, known as B-boys and B-girls, freestyled their moves on the world’s biggest stage.

Talash’s slogan may have fallen foul of rules against political slogans at the Olympics but it has also found her fans.

“I would like to say that it’s only been 11 minutes of breaking and a competitor already pulled out a surprise jacket that says “Free Afghan Women”—THAT is breaking. THAT is hiphop culture,” Nadira Goffe, an associate writer at Slate magazine, wrote on X.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ running mate has a decades-long connection with China. But in the eyes of Beijing, that may not necessarily be good news.

Tim Walz moved to China fresh out of college in 1989 to teach high school for a year, and then frequently returned to the country during a decade of taking American students on summer cultural exchanges.

The 60-year-old Minnesota governor has spoken fondly of his time in China and the people he met there, and his familiarity with the country and empathy for its people bring a personal, nuanced perspective on the United States’ biggest strategic rival that is rare among his political peers.

Some Republican opponents have seized on that experience to accuse Walz of being “pro-China,” but the Democratic vice-presidential nominee has a long history of criticizing authoritarian Chinese leadership.

Walz moved to China at a tumultuous and politically charged time, shortly after the Tiananmen Square massacre, when the ruling Communist Party sent tanks in to violently quell peaceful student-led democracy protests in Beijing. Upon returning home to Nebraska in 1990, he told a local newspaper he felt the Chinese people had been mistreated by their government for years.

“If they had the proper leadership, there are no limits on what they could accomplish. They are such kind, generous, capable people,” he told the Star-Herald at the time.

During his time in Congress from 2007 to 2019, Walz rallied support for imprisoned Chinese activists. He met with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader loathed by Beijing, and Joshua Wong, the young Hong Kong democracy activist now jailed for his activism against Beijing’s tightening grip.

“The more he understands China, the more he feels pity for the Chinese people, and the more critical he becomes of the rulers who govern them,” said Shen Dingli, a foreign policy analyst in Shanghai.

“He has some understanding of Chinese culture and respects it in his heart, but he definitely does not accept China’s political (system),” Shen added. “Beijing is probably more fearful and uncomfortable with such a foreigner who understands China.”

‘It was more about the people’

Walz was among the first groups of young Americans to teach in high schools in China under a Harvard University volunteer program, just a decade after the two countries established diplomatic relations.

As a fresh graduate, he spent a year teaching English and American history at the Foshan No. 1 High School, in the southern province of Guangdong.

There, he was met with industrious and welcoming students who applauded him each time he used a Chinese word correctly, and friendly strangers who offered to help whenever he stopped in the streets looking bewildered, he told the Star-Herald in 1990.

“I was treated exceptionally well,” he told the newspaper. “There was no anti-American feeling whatsoever. American is ‘It’ in the eyes of the Chinese. Many of the students want to come to America to study.”

That was a different era in China. The impoverished country was curious about the world after emerging from decades of self-imposed isolation and tumultuous rule under Mao Zedong. Paramount leader Deng Xiaoping unleashed market reforms and, along with an economic opening, calls for political liberalization gathered pace in the 1980s.

Such calls coalesced into a student-led movement in the spring of 1989, which was brutally put down by the Chinese military weeks before Walz’s trip.

“I remember waking up and seeing the news on June 4 that the unthinkable had happened,” Walz told Voice of America in an interview in 2014.

“Many of my colleagues decided to go home and not to go on [to China]. I thought it was more important than ever to go, to make sure the story was told and to let the Chinese people know we were standing there, we were with them.”

From Guangdong, Walz took a 40-hour cross-country train ride to the Chinese capital to see Tiananmen Square, the site of the democracy protests.

He made sure he would always commemorate the crackdown in a personal way – by getting married on June 4, 1994, the fifth anniversary of the massacre.

“He wanted to have a date he’ll always remember,” his wife and fellow high-school teacher, Gwen, told a local newspaper in Minnesota before their wedding.

The newlyweds spent their honeymoon taking students on two-week tours in China for sightseeing and classes on culture, education and history. These trips became a summer tradition for the couple through 2003.

“I would go back in a heartbeat,” said Cara Roemhildt, who went on such a trip in 1998. “It was an educational trip with one of our favorite teachers. It was more about the people. It wasn’t about the politics.”

Roemhildt said she and her classmates still talk about the trip decades later.

A nuanced critic

After entering politics in 2006, Walz continued to devote time and attention to China in Congress.

He served more than a decade on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which monitors human rights and the rule of law in the country – a role Beijing would not be happy about.

“The Chinese government has always viewed that commission as ‘anti-China,’” said Liu Dongshu, an assistant professor of public and international affairs at the City University of Hong Kong.

In Congress, Walz co-sponsored a series of resolutions calling on China to release its jailed rights activists, including Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo, who eventually died in custody of liver cancer.

In 2015, Walz joined a congressional delegation on a trip to China, which included a rare stop in Tibet, which he had also visited decades earlier during his time teaching at the Chinese high school.

The following year, Walz met the Dalai Lama in Washington for what he called a “life-changing lunch.” He also welcomed Lobsang Sangay, then leader of Tibet’s government in exile, into his congressional office to meet a group of Minnesota high-school students.

At a congressional meeting that year, he called on Beijing to “ensure the preservation of traditional Tibetan culture” and “provide less regulated religious freedom to the Tibetans.”

Walz has also been a vocal supporter of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.

In 2017, when Wong, the student protest leader, was jailed for his political activism, Walz posted a photo of himself and the young activist standing side by side to show solidarity with “all advocating for democracy in Hong Kong.”

Walz also threw his support behind the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which sanctions officials responsible for human rights violations in the city, when the legislation appeared to be languishing in Congress.

“We knocked on every door when the #HKHRDA lacked momentum. Only Walz answered his,” Jeffrey Ngo, a Hong Kong democracy activist now based in Washington, said on X.

“Walz is perhaps the most solid candidate when it comes to human rights and China on a major-party ticket in recent memory,” Ngo said.

On the diplomatic front, Walz has criticized China’s unfair trade practices and its growing assertiveness in the South China Sea.

In Chinese nationalist circles, which have an outsized voice on policy debates in China, there are no rosy illusions about Walz.

“On human rights and ideological issues, he has basically crossed all the possible red lines out there,” Shen Yi, an international relations scholar known for his fiercely nationalistic views, wrote on social media.

But unlike more hawkish politicians, Walz does not believe in decoupling, and instead holds a more nuanced view on the geostrategic rivalry between the US and China.

“I don’t fall into the category that China necessarily needs to be an adversarial relationship. I totally disagree,” he said in an interview in 2016.

“We’re on the same sheet of music, two of the world’s great superpowers, there’s many collaborative things we can do together.”

Stephen Roach, former chief of Morgan Stanley Asia, said the Harris-Walz ticket may provide “an important counterweight to the current venom of American Sinophobia.”

Walz’s empathy for the Chinese people and appreciation of China’s non-political aspects make him a harder case for Beijing to “villainize as an ‘anti-China’ foil” than politicians that are hawkish on all dimensions, Eric Fish, a former Beijing-based journalist and author of “China’s Millennials: The Want Generation,” said on X.

‘A complex country’

Walz’s extensive experience with China makes him a rare figure in the race for the White House – at least since George H. W. Bush, who served as America’s unofficial ambassador to Beijing in the mid-1970s before running for vice president and later president.

Bush’s stint in Beijing would go on to influence his foreign policy – and help steer US-China relations through the tumultuous fallout of the Tiananmen crackdown.

But US-China relations are at a very different place now from the honeymoon period of engagement. Being tough on China has become a rare point of bipartisan consensus in the US, and Beijing is unlikely to be counting on Walz to improve bilateral ties.

“The direction of US policy towards China is very clear. As an individual, regardless of your attitude towards China, there’s not much room for maneuver,” said Liu, the expert at the City University of Hong Kong.

“And vice presidents can have a varied level of say in foreign policy, depending on the president they serve,” he added.

Walz’s experience living and teaching in China could serve as a useful diplomatic ice breaker to warm up the room if that’s what the two sides wish to do, Liu said. But even then, he added, the Chinese would need to dance around the awkwardness in the timing and avoid all mention of the Tiananmen crackdown – which remains a political taboo in China.

On China’s tightly controlled social media, Walz’s early ties to the country have raised eyebrows and generated considerable interest. The hashtag “Harris’ VP pick once taught in China” racked up 15 million views on microblogging site Weibo.

The year of Walz’s arrival in China – 1989 – was not lost among those who understand the sensitivity of the date, despite decades of effort by the Chinese government to erase the brutal crackdown from public memory.

But, perhaps reflective of the different era China now finds itself in under leader Xi Jinping, who has fanned nationalist sentiment and suspicion against foreigners over national security, many questioned the “real motive” of Walz’s first trip to China.

“Heh, 1989-1990, Americans teaching in China during this period – it’s something worth pondering carefully,” said a top comment on Weibo.

“Must be a spy,” said another.

Liu said that, given how drastically China has changed over the past decades, Walz’s understanding of the country from his younger days may offer limited help on American policy toward China today.

Walz himself has conceded that he’s by no means a China expert.

“I lived in China, and as I said I’ve been there about 30 times,” he said in the 2016 interview. “But if someone tells you they’re an expert on China, they’re probably not telling you the truth because it’s a complex country.”

Parts of Port-au-Prince are showing signs of life again: On the once-desolate Boulevard Toussaint Louverture, a young couple could be seen hugging one recent afternoon. Down the street, a group of men danced as Bob Marley’s “One Love” came on the radio.

A few months ago, walking down this main artery in Haiti’s capital was inconceivable; a loose alliance of gangs was rampaging, kidnapping civilians, blocking shipments of food and water, and battling the Haitian National Police block by block. Since the arrival in late June of a foreign police force known as the Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission, criminal attacks here have slowed.

But in “red zones” across the city and beyond, a new war is just beginning, as gangs test the still-forming MSS. Haitians and the mission’s backers in Washington are watching closely for signs of weakness.

Rolling through downtown Port-au-Prince, the armored convoy came under intense fire in the dark. Inside one vehicle, the stifling metal cabin was quiet, except for the bullets rattling angrily at reinforced windows and doors. A Kenyan officer brushed it off as mere “rain” typical of a patrol in Port-au-Prince, but later took careful note of the close-range pocks and thick cracks left behind.

None of the troops returned fire; they could not – their vehicles had been delivered to Haiti without turrets from which to shoot. Making painfully slow three – and four, and five – point turns on the narrow street, the hulking fighting vehicles retreated under an echoing onslaught.

The next day, a Kenyan officer would become the mission’s first injury, struck in the arm as he attempted to shoot out of a half-open loading panel during a gang attack on a grain delivery truck.

Security experts panned the maneuver as unprofessional; Kenyan troops say it’s the only option with the equipment they currently have.

‘The arrival of the Kenyans has created expectations’

This mission was debated for years before it came into being.

Since at least 2022, Haiti’s neighbors have agonized openly over the spread of insurgent armed groups in the Caribbean nation. Responding with force became the only obvious option in March, when a series of coordinated gang attacks on government buildings and prisons forced the Haitian government to dissolve – threatening a state of anarchy just two hours from the Florida coast.

That’s how Garry Conille – a Haitian doctor, former regional director for the United Nations’ children’s agency, UNICEF, and self-described “non-political person” – ended up in charge of solving the crisis. Regional bloc CARICOM orchestrated the creation of a transitional governing council for Haiti, which in turn appointed Conille as interim prime minister in May.

In a rare interview, Conille summarized the situation with the ready statistics of a career humanitarian: Over 85% of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area is under gang control; around 600,000 people have been forced to flee their homes; some 2 million people live in fear of being raped or killed in their households, he estimated.

In other words, the MSS mission has no time to lose.

“People are living in under very bad circumstances. So, they want to see action. They want to see movement,” Conille said.

Public confidence in the mission’s ability to restore security is key to rebuild the Haitian state, says Conille, who works the phones “every single day” to expedite the delivery of hundreds of millions in funds and equipment pledged to the MSS by international donors. It needs to come faster, he says.

“The arrival of the Kenyans has created expectations, and we need to meet this expectation or the whole system crumbles, including the credibility of the transitional government,” he explained as we walked through piles of trash, abandoned prosthetics, and wrecked electrical generators.

“The concern is: Will we get the amount of resources we need so that this force can be deployed as quickly as possible, and that we can see in the next few weeks and months?” said Conille.

“My anticipation is that political interests will begin to use the sentiment of inertia or the lack of movement to mobilize frustration of population and destabilize what is still a very fragile consensus.”

Inside the MSS base

The creation of the MSS base is itself was an achievement. In just months, empty lots next to Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint Louverture International Airport have transformed from a battle zone to a bustling little town of men in camouflage.

Private security guards arrived first, camping under the wings of old aircraft as they secured the area. Then a wave of private contractors were brought in, working around the clock to build access roads and helipads, a gleaming mess hall, expansive field hospital, long domed tents for offices and barracks, and even a laundry room, where laminated signs warn against throwing body armor in the dryer.

A monumental reminder of the rush with which it all came together, a passenger jet from the now-defunct Planet Airways still sits rusting onsite – there was no time to move it before the first deployment of Kenyans arrived.

Four hundred Kenyan police live here, many of them selected from special units and border police. They are the vanguard of a force that could soon grow to 2,500 strong, with more troops expected from Jamaica, Benin, Chad, the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados and Belize.

This mission is designed to break the mold; unlike previous peacekeeping missions in Haiti, the MSS is independent of the United Nations. Largely funded by the United States, along with France and Canada, it will consist mostly of police rather than militaries, and is mandated to bolster Haitian National Police operations rather than sideline them – hence the word “support” in the mission’s official name (though locals refer to the MSS as simply “the Kenyans.”)

Kenyan police are no strangers to allegations of human rights abuses, but they’re putting in guardrails to avoid the scandals of previous missions in Haiti, including allegations of sexual exploitation and the 2010 introduction of cholera by UN peacekeepers. On a tour of the base, Otunge highlighted its sanitation system and handwashing facilities. Troops are not allowed to leave the base during off-hours.

With the mission still in “phase one” of its deployment, Otunge says it’s a good sign that his men are already able to perform patrols to establish a public presence, while waiting to reach full strength.

“Once we now reach the full operational capability of the mission, there will be nothing to worry about in the issue of gangs in this country,” he says.

Otunge’s confidence is infectious. No wonder his officers pooh-pooh Haiti’s gangs as amateurs compared to their previous foes, like Al Shabaab – though the al Qaeda affiliate hasn’t been entirely vanquished back home in Kenya.

Managing expectations

Several expressed worry that the mission is already struggling to live up to expectations abroad, with viral videos by local journalists in Port-au-Prince showing Haitian and Kenyan police handling some engagements ham-handedly and shouting at each other in apparent frustration.

Tactical victories are hoped to help validate foreign governments’ commitments to the MSS, and even persuade more international partners to open their purses. According to a July 30 press conference by Normil, the police chief, over 100 alleged gang members have been “stopped” – an apparent euphemism for killed – in exchanges of fire with police and an additional 65 arrested in recent operations.

Still, those kinds of numbers barely begin to address the scale of crime and impunity in the Port-au-Prince area.

Last week, a gang raided a boarding school for deaf children, the Institut Monfort, in the western outskirts of the capital. The attack scattered the nuns who work there and 47 of their charges into the night, forcing them to shelter with other religious organizations across the city, according to Sister Lamercie Estinfort.

“The kids could not stop crying. The gang screamed at them and made them lie on the floor and threatened to shoot them if they didn’t stop crying, but our kids couldn’t understand anything that was happening. They are deaf.”

No one came to help, she said – not the police, and not the MSS forces. She and the children are now among the hundreds of thousands of Haitians made homeless by gang attacks.

The incident is one of several fueling fears that as the MSS settles into Port-au-Prince, criminal groups are now shifting their focus to the city’s outskirts.

An MSS spokesperson said they were not called to respond to the incident, and Haitian National Police did not respond to request for comment.

Further west, in the town of Ganthier, a joint response last week by Haitian National Police and MSS forces to an assault by the gang 400 Mawozo was touted as a victory, but has proven inconclusive, with the group still attacking in the area.

“I’m even waiting for orders myself, to hear the order: ‘It’s time to dismantle Barbeque. To dismantle Lanmo Sanjou. To dismantle Izo. To dismantle Chen Mechan,’” he said listing the nicknames of notorious Port-au-Prince gang bosses.

Breakfast with the US ambassador

Hankins promises that more equipment is on the way, but argues the MSS has already had a powerful psychological impact.

“When I arrived in Haiti four months ago, I had to come in by helicopter, because the gangs had attacked the airport. The city was essentially under siege. And there were realistic concerns that the security forces would collapse totally, and that we might by now have a de facto President Barbecue,” Hankins says, referring to one of the most outspoken gang leaders in the city.

“So, if you move forward four months, huge political progress, huge security progress. A lot of challenges ahead and certainly no guarantees of the future. But we’re just in a much better place than when I arrived.”

And it’s not just about what the Haitian public and funders think, he says. In addition to material support, the symbolism of the MSS and its gleaming base also sends an important message to Haiti’s police that the world is with them. And that could make a difference in their operations, Hankins suggests.

“As soon as you get confidence and at least some equipment for the security forces, the gangs tend to back off … half the gang members are kids. They don’t have military training.”

The list of what remains to be done is long and complicated. The mission aims to establish forward operating bases, including in the volatile Artibonite region, an agricultural powerhouse in central Haiti, to eventually defend territory seized from the gangs. The Haitian Justice Department is looking into possible mobile courts to speedily process arrested gang members, in a country where many prisoners have never seen a judge.

Prisons must be built – there isn’t space to put all the gang members that the MSS hopes to arrest. And the country’s child protection agency IBESR and UNICEF just signed a protocol for handling children affiliated with armed groups, who are estimated by the Haitian government to make up 30% to 50% of the gangs’ ranks.

But first, MSS troops say they need the basics – like turrets for their vehicles.

As Haiti becomes once again a laboratory for international intervention, its gangs are waiting and watching. Some have called for dialogue, offering a potential avenue toward a negotiated peace, which Conille has not ruled out. Others have already thrown down the gauntlet, posting videos on social media of fresh weapons shipments smuggled into the country, and ceiling-high stacks of ammunition.

An investigation by Amnesty International alleges that a US-made weapons guidance system was used in two Israeli airstrikes in Gaza in October in which 43 civilians are said to have been killed.

Fragments of the US-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions guidance system were found in the rubble of destroyed homes in the neighborhood of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, according to a report released Tuesday by the human rights organization.

Israel uses a wide variety of American weapons and munitions, but Amnesty International’s report is one of the first attempts to tie an American-made weapon to a specific attack that left a significant number of civilians dead.

The JDAM is a “guidance tail kit that converts existing unguided free-fall bombs into accurate, adverse weather ‘smart’ munitions,” according to the US Air Force.

Amnesty International said its weapons experts and a “remote sensing analyst” examined satellite imagery and photos of the homes that show the “fragments of ordnance recovered from the rubble” and the destruction, the report explains. Amnesty’s fieldworkers took the photos.

As a result of these two attacks, 19 children, 14 women, and 10 men were killed, the report claims.

The human rights organization said it “did not find any indication that there were any military objectives at the sites” of the airstrikes or that the individuals living in the homes were legitimate military targets.

“The organization found that these air strikes were either direct attacks on civilians or civilian objects or indiscriminate attacks,” the report says, calling for the attacks to be investigated as war crimes.

“The assumption that intelligence regarding the military use of a particular structure does not exist unless revealed is contradictory to any understanding of military activity, and the report uses this flawed assumption to imply equally flawed and biased conclusions regarding the IDF, in line with existing biases and prior problematic work by this organization,” the IDF said.

The statement said that the military “regrets any harm caused to civilians or civilian property as a result of its operations, and examines all its operations in order to learn and improve.”

Amnesty International, in its report, said that the use of American weapons for such strikes “should be an urgent wake-up call to the Biden administration.”

“The US-made weapons facilitated the mass killings of extended families,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, according to the report.

US reviewing report

The US State Department is reviewing Amnesty International’s report, spokesperson Matt Miller said Wednesday.

“We have made clear in our discussions with Israeli leaders that we are deeply concerned about the protection of civilians in this conflict,” Miller said. “We expect Israel to only target legitimate targets and to adhere to the laws of armed conflict.”

The Pentagon on Tuesday said it too was reviewing the report.

“We are going to continue to consult closely with our Israeli partners on the importance of taking civilian safety into account in conducting their operations,” spokesman Brigadier General Patrick Ryder told journalists.

Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign assistance since World War II, according to the Congressional Research Service. The US on average gives Israel $3 billion in military aid per year, and the Biden administration sought an additional $10.6 billion in military aid in the wake of Hamas’ October 7 attack in Israel.

The first attack referenced by Amnesty International occurred about 8:30 p.m. on October 10, hitting the al-Najjar family home and killing 21 of its members, as well as three of their neighbors, the report says.

That bomb most likely weighed about 2,000 pounds, based on the amount of damage to the home and surrounding buildings, Amnesty claims. The year 2017 is also stamped into the plate, photos from the report show, indicating the bomb was manufactured in that year.

“JDAM is a guided air-to-surface weapon that uses either the 2,000-pound BLU-109/MK 84, the 1,000-pound BLU-110/MK 83 or the 500-pound BLU-111/MK 82 warhead as the payload,” according to the US Air Force.

‘A scene of utter destruction’

Suleiman Salman al-Najjar, who survived the attack, told Amnesty he had been ill and returned from the hospital to find his home bombed and family killed. “I was shocked. I rushed home and saw a scene of utter destruction. I could not believe my eyes. Everybody was under the rubble. The house was completely pulverized. The bodies were reduced to shreds,” he said.

The second attack occurred about midday on October 22 and hit three houses belonging to three brothers in the Abu Mu’eileq family, the report says. In total, 18 members of the Mu-eileq family were killed, including 12 children and six women, as well as one of their neighbors, the report says.

Bakir Abu Mu’eileq told Amnesty he lost his wife and four of their children in the attack. Abu Mu’eileq – an ear, nose and throat specialist – said that he had been working at the nearby hospital when the attack occurred.

“We are three brothers married to three sisters, living among ourselves, focused on our families and work, and far from politics. We are doctors and scientists,” Abu Mu’eileq said, adding, “we cannot understand why our homes were bombed. … There is nobody armed or political here. Our lives, our families, were destroyed completely, obliterated. Why?”

Amnesty says photos show the bomb that hit the homes of the Mu-eileq family weighed about 1,000 pounds and was manufactured in 2018, according to the year stamped into the plate.

“The US may share responsibility for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed by Israel with US-supplied weapons, as all states have a duty not to knowingly contribute to internationally wrongful acts by other states,” Amnesty warned.

The human rights organization is urging the US government and other governments to stop transferring arms to Israel “that more likely than not will be used to commit or heighten risks of violations of international law.”

“A state that continues to supply arms being used to commit violations may share responsibility for these violations,” Amnesty said.