Monday, April 16 during a press briefing at the Foreign Ministry, Laurent Lamothe, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, said he was satisfied of the participation of Haiti in the sixth Summit of the Americas, indicating that they had fruitful meetings that will have positive impact for the Haitian population.

"[...] we met with various delegations, we had a meeting with Caricom where we discuss of the future representation of the Caricom in Haiti and measures we should put in place so that Caricom may have good representation here, in all matters of interest, such as visas with Caricom countries and other issues. I must tell you that many leaders really support the cause of Haiti and we were very glad to see that [...] we had a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper we discussed projects that Canada has for Haiti and we took the opportunity to thank them for the Champs de Mars, because we see that things are moving fast at this level, almost half of the Champs de Mars is already emptied, with the help of Canada [...]"

Laurent Lamothe announced the arrival in Haiti on April 25, of a technical mission Venezuelan working in agriculture. Stressing also the willingness of Brazil to help local authorities to implement the process of electronic voting in future electoral contests, he confirmed the conclusion of a cooperation agreement with Brazil, which undertakes, through the 4C project, to facilitate irrigation of farmland in the Artibonite and the development of energy production for this department.

This Sixth Summit of the Americas, was also an opportunity for the Chancellor Lamothe, to advocate in order to obtain a faster disbursement of aid pledged to Haiti

"[...] We asked them they activate, they accelerate the promises they made to help Haiti. As we know, more than 9 billion has been promised and only 43% of this amount has been disbursed so, we asked them to work with us, so that the remaining amount to be disbursed to support the process of reconstruction of country, because we have roads, hospitals, clinics, schools to build, we must literate population, we have programs to free schools... We have all kinds of financial pressures... We asked them to understand the urgency of the situation and continue to accelerate the disbursement process [...]"

However, Laurent Lamothe noted that the current lack of a functioning government in Haiti was the cause of slowdown into disbursements because "the mechanisms that these country use to make their disbursements, it is with functional governments, not with governments resigned... given that the current government in Haiti is a resigning government, they are in a position where they slow disbursements... it does not help with the strategy [...] they say yes, but who is the interlocutor ? The interlocutor is a resigning government so this puts us in a situation where our ability to negotiate are reduced. [...]

There is another thing also, Haiti is still in a position of claimant [...] they told us that it is necessary that we fly with our own wings. We told them that we want to fly with our own wings and we have submitted them a list of our needs in order to do it [...] there are many things that come against us, but that does not mean hat we can not we take out of the current situation. I think that with the conviction, with the will we are able to out the population of the situation in which it is [...]"

At this summit, it was also for the Minister of Foreign Affair to raise international awareness on the necessity to ensure that aid reaches directly the state institutions.

"[...] It is necessary that the international community works with us so that in the near future, we can fly with our own wings and what we mean by that is that they need to invest in state institutions, because the institutions as we know, with years of lack of funding, years where many funds are go through by institutions that are not governmental institutions [NGOs] in result, our institutions have become so weak, we asked them to invest in the institutions so that we can be in a position where tomorrow we will be able to take things in hand [...]"

See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-5404-haiti-politic-laurent-lamothe-at-the-6th-summit-of-the-americas-in-colombia.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-5404-haiti-politic-laurent-lamothe-at-the-6th-summit-of-the-americas-in-colombia.html

SL/ HaitiLibre