Haiti sanctions

Canada has expanded its economic sanctions freezing the Canadian assets of Haitian political elites to include former president Michel Martelly and former prime ministers Laurent Lamothe and Jean-Henry Ce´ant. Foreign Affairs Minister Me´lanie Joly accused the trio this weekend of helping gangs undermine Haiti’s current government and called on international partners to follow Canada’s lead. She made the announcement at a two-day Francophonie summit in Tunisia. Haiti’s Government has asked for an international military intervention to combat gangs who have strangled access to fuel and critical supplies in the middle of the outbreak. Canadian military intervention in Haiti can’t happen unless all political parties in the troubled nation agree to it, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said yesterday. The country has seen rising violence and increasingly brazen attacks by Haitian gangs that have grown more powerful since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Mo¨ıse.