Kenyan President William Ruto said Thursday during a joint news conference with President Joe Biden that while his country has “made tremendous progress” domestically, “that does not take away our responsibility” to assist with security internationally.
Ayub Abdikadir, a reporter for a Kenyan news outlet, asked Ruto why he was committing 1,000 national police officers to Haiti when there is a banditry problem in Kenya, forcing school closures in some counties. “Isn’t it an irony that you are putting [out] the fire in the faraway neighbor’s home when our own home’s on fire?” Abdikadir asked.
Ruto responded that he made a commitment to secure Kenya’s North Rift region. “I have followed that with action,” he said, noting that thousands of military and police officers have been deployed to the region and dozens of schools are being renovated and reopened.
“Even as we were deploying troops and policemen in our own country, in North Rift, to sort out the banditry problem, we still deployed 1,000 troops to DRC Congo because that is our neighborhood,” Ruto said. “We have 5,000 troops in Somalia because, equally, that is our responsibility, and Haiti should not be an exception.”
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