On Monday, August 5, 2024, Godfrey Otunge, the Commander of the Multinational Security Support Mission (MMSS), officially launched a month of linguistic and intercultural capacity development for the Mission’s uniformed staff, sponsored and led by the French Government through its Embassy in Haiti.

While French and Haitian Creole are the languages ​​of the Haitian institutions and population with which the MMSS will interact, several States that have expressed the possibility of contributing to the mission are not French-speaking and/or Creole-speaking

Drawing on its experience, the International Organization of La Francophonie (IOF) has developed a fully funded, ready-to-use training program to support the linguistic (Haitian Creole and French) and intercultural capacities of the Mission’s uniformed personnel.

The objective is to improve the performance of all Mission personnel, as well as their interaction with the host country in order to develop a relationship of trust.

The teaching of Creole and French is implemented in partnership with the French Institutes, the French Alliances and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR).

In the future, the language barrier will be a thing of the past, as police officers will be empowered with skills and knowledge to communicate and interact with the Haitians who have welcomed them into their country.

HL/ S/ HaitiLibre