Canada on Sunday announced new aid for Haiti and the imposition of sanctions against former Haitian President Michel Martelly and the two former prime ministers accused of profiting from the work of armed gangs.
“The people sanctioned directly benefit from the work of the gangs and are associated with a system of corruption”, explained Mélanie Joly, the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs during a press conference in Djerba on the sidelines of the Francophonie summit, in Tunisia.
The two former prime ministers targeted by these sanctions, which will cause the freezing of all their property held in Canada, are Laurent Lamothe and Jean Henry Céant, said the Canadian government.
Similar sanctions had been announced earlier in November against the president of the Senate and one of his predecessors, also accused of having links to organized crime.
Canada also announced Sunday several aids for Haiti for a total amount of 16.5 million Canadian dollars, in particular to help the country deal with an epidemic of cholera and to fight against corruption and impunity.
Eight million dollars will be paid in particular to meet the needs of populations affected by the security, health and food crisis.
This aid is “necessary to provide water, food and the health assistance necessary to fight cholera”, explained Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The Caribbean country has been stuck for years in a deep economic, security and political crisis, and the assassination of President Moïse has profoundly worsened the situation, with an increasingly strong grip by gangs.
The population is also facing a new cholera epidemic, only three years after having eradicated a previous epidemic of this disease which killed more than 10,000 people.
The government of Haiti and the UN office in Port-au-Prince launched an appeal in mid-November to raise $145.6 million to deal with this epidemic, which has already caused the death of 161 people in the country.