“I continue to appeal to member states to deploy a multinational force,” Guterres writes in a letter to the UN Security Council that AFP has seen.
Guterres and Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry have for months appealed for international help to the police. In late July, Kenya announced it was willing to lead a multinational police effort to train and assist the Haitian police, and Nairobi pledged 1,000 police officers.
The mission would need a green light from the Security Council, although it would not operate under the UN flag.
Guterres welcomed Kenya’s move in his letter, saying a deployment was “urgently needed”.
On Wednesday, Jimmy Chérizier, a former police officer now considered by many to be Haiti’s most powerful gang leader, said international forces in the country would be fought if they brought trouble.
Previous UN-led interventions in Haiti, in 1994 and 2004, have been followed by allegations of rape and that foreign soldiers arrived there with cholera.
“We will fight them until our last breath,” he said.
Chérizier, who goes by the name “Barbecue”, also called on Haitians to mobilize against the government.
– We ask the population to stand up, he said at a press conference.
About 80 percent of Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince is controlled by criminal gangs and violent crimes such as kidnappings, armed robberies and carjackings are commonplace.