UN wants another year for Haiti peacekeeping mission

The U.N. secretary-general is recommending that the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti stay for another year.

The head of the mission, Sandra Honore, told the U.N. Security Council on Thursday that Ban Ki-moon wants the peacekeeping mission to extend for a year to help Haiti complete its upcoming round of elections.

She says the mission also will help the country with an "orderly and sustainable" transfer to having national authorities assume responsibility for future elections.

The first round of Haiti's presidential election and the second round of local elections are set for Oct. 25.

Honore told reporters that she is urging all parties in Haiti to avoid the kind of violent disruptions that marred legislative elections in August.

The Security Council will consider the mission's mandate later this month. The mission had more than 4,500 uniformed personnel as of late June.

The mission has not been untroubled. A report by the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) found members of a U.N. peacekeeping mission engaged in "transactional sex" with more than 225 Haitian women who said they needed to do so in order to obtain necessities like food and medication, a sign that sexual exploitation remains significantly underreported in such missions.

The Associated Press