(Bloomberg) -- Kenya and Haiti signed a pact that will enable the East African nation to send 1,000 police officers to the island as part of a bid by donors to stop the country’s slide deeper into lawlessness. 

Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henri and President William Ruto “have also discussed the next steps to enable the fast-tracking of the deployment,” the Kenyan leader said in a statement Friday. 

The cabinet and National Security Council in Nairobi first approved the deployment in October, a decision unanimously endorsed by Kenyan lawmakers a month later. Kenya’s high court temporarily blocked the plan, saying such a deployment would be unconstitutional. 

The UN Security Council approved the mission in October in a bid to help Haiti’s overwhelmed police force confront rampant gang violence that has pushed the country deeper into chaos. The nation was rattled by anti-government protests in February that have left at least six dead and large swathes of the nation paralyzed. 

Read more: US to Push Haiti Donors for Faster Police Deployment Amid Crisis 

 

--With assistance from David Herbling.

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