Many streets of Port-au-Prince are blocked with cars and trucks, with all kinds of objects that neighbors place to prevent the entry of armed gangs into their neighborhoods.

This is the situation that EFE found in the capital areas of Delmas 31 and Delmas 33, where the president of a neighborhood board, James Polimo, explained that it is the way they have to “self-protect” from gang violence, their attacks, killings, rapes and kidnappings.

According to Polimo to EFE, although in his neighborhood as such there are no gangs nearby, they are protected because recently members of armed groups tried to kidnap a person who works in the area.

The inhabitants, when they realized, had to cut the streets “so that they didn’t fall on him.”

Those blockages give the neighbors a greater sense of security and, he added, “although they are not one hundred percent protected, they feel safer than on the other side of the barrier.”

“Here 50 percent can sleep at night because they feel protected,” Polimo said in the face of extreme insecurity in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince, largely under the control of gangs and in the midst of violence that has forced thousands of people to leave their homes and become displaced people within the city or to flee to other areas of the country or abroad.

Despite the difficulties that the cutting of streets entails for the neighbors when it comes to accessing the neighborhood, they don’t care because “when they enter, they feel safer than outside.”

He added that, if a member of the gangs decided to enter his neighborhood, “he could not be there for more than three minutes because the neighbors would catch him.”

When asked about how he sees the next deployment of the multinational security support mission, led by Kenya and approved by the UN, Polimo assured that it will be welcome, but considers that “the problem of Haiti is the same Haitians, who have to be together to be able to give security to the country and solve the problems.”

In his opinion, international troops come to Haiti to protect the country, but “we are the ones who have to stand ahead” when it comes to resolving the situation.

In early May, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Bahamas, Fred Mitchell, whose country will also send troops to Haiti, announced that the deployment of the multinational mission to restore security would begin on the 26th of this month.

Biden received Kenyan President William Ruto, on Thursday at the White House, and in fact raised the level of the bilateral alliance by designating the African country as a ‘main ally outside NATO’ for its leadership in that mission that will be deployed in Haiti.

At a press conference, Biden promised logistical support to the multinational security mission, but reiterated that the United States will not send soldiers to Haiti.

For the deployment of that force, which will be composed of about 2,500 members from countries from different continents, the Biden Administration committed 300 million dollars and calculated that the mission will have an annual cost of between 500 and 600 million, so it has pressured its allies to make more contributions.

The political, social and economic crisis and the escalation of violence have resulted in numerous changes in Haiti, with consequences such as Henry’s resignation and the creation of a Transitional Presidential Council, which should lead to the holding of presidential elections.

Last year alone, the violence caused 8,000 victims in Haiti, where the gangs control much of Port-au-Prince and other areas of the country.

Brazil, which faces the worst dengue epidemic in its history, registers so far this year a record of 3,039 deaths from the disease. Almost three times those counted in all of 2023 (1,179), which was until now the year with the most deaths from the virus, the Government reported.

The number of deaths may be even higher because it does not include the 2,679 deaths under investigation, according to the latest epidemiological bulletin released by the Ministry of Health.

The number of probable cases, which exceed the Government’s worst forecasts, is also a record, with 5.2 million to date, more than three times those recorded in all of 2015 (1.6 million), which was until now the year with the most infections.

The rate of contagion, however, has slowed sharply after the end of summer, which is the time with the highest incidence due to heat and humidity, conditions that favor the proliferation of Aedes aegypti, the transmitting mosquito.

According to the Ministry of Health, the number of infections has been falling gradually since the end of March and in the last week it stood at 101,853, after having reached a record of 427,940 in the third week of March.

The severity of the current epidemic is attributed to the effects of the El Niño climate phenomenon, which raised temperatures and increased rainfall throughout the country.

In the midst of the epidemic, Brazil became in February the first country in the world to offer the dengue vaccine through the public health system, although the low number of doses available has limited its application only to children and adolescents.

President Joe Biden said on Friday that the death of African-American George Floyd at the hands of the Police four years ago, which raised massive protests in the United States and other countries, changed the world and “shook the conscience of our country.”

“The day before Floyd’s funeral, his little daughter Gianna told me ‘Dad has changed the world,'” Biden recalled according to a statement from the White House. “Four years after the murder of his father, there is no doubt that he has done it.”

On May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis (Minnesota), Floyd was arrested by police officers from that city and one of them, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee for more than nine minutes on the neck of the victim who was handcuffed and asked for help.

The autopsy determined that Floyd’s heart had stopped beating while he was subjected to Chauvin and that his death had been a homicide caused by a cardiopulmonary arrest, although the consumption of fentanyl and a heart disease were factors that contributed to his death.

Floyd’s murder, recorded on video, triggered a huge wave of protests in several cities in the United States against racism and police violence that lasted for months and gave impetus to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement.

“Floyd should be alive today,” Biden said. “His assassination shook the conscience of our nation and reminded us that our country has never fully fulfilled its highest ideal of a system of impartial justice for all.”

“As a result, we witnessed one of the largest civil rights movements in the history of our nation, in which people from all sectors marched together against racism and systemic injustice,” he added.

Biden pointed out that black and Latino communities “too often have endured the onslaught of injustice.”

After Floyd’s death, the city of Minneapolis reached a reconciliation for 27 million dollars with his family. Chauvin was prosecuted and convicted in June 2021, he received a sentence of 22 and a half years in prison.

Three other police officers involved in the incident were convicted of violating Floyd’s civil rights.