Trudeau is blaming Russia for the skyrocketing energy and food prices that have left millions of people in Africa and other parts of the world struggling to feed themselves.
KIGALI, RWANDA - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paid his respects to victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide in Kigali before announcing $250 million in new food aid on Thursday as he sought to build consensus with Commonwealth nations to prevent a new humanitarian crisis.
Trudeau became the first Canadian prime minister to visit the Kigali Genocide Memorial, which serves as the final resting place of more than 250,000 of the more than 800,000 Rwandans killed over 100 days during the conflict. Several of the poorer countries in the Commonwealth have felt the pangs of famine that’s becoming a pressing issue around the world as access to grain from Ukraine and Russia has been limited by the war.
“The illegal invasion of Ukraine, the choice to bomb grain silos in Ukraine over the past couple of days, the continued blockade of the port of Odessa by Russian ships to prevent grain from getting out to the Middle East to Africa to elsewhere around the world, are real preoccupations for all of us here.”
Human rights groups have been raising concerns about human rights violations in Rwanda under President Paul Kagame for years. Those concerns have included the arrest and prosecution of opposition figures and dissenting bloggers and commentators. This is the first time Commonwealth Heads of Government have met in person since 2018. The 2020 summit, like most events, was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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