Day: October 22, 2019

Zimbabwe has declared a new public holiday to protest U.S sanctions it says are hurting its economy, and the day comes with a state-sponsored festival.

Acting information minister Amon Murwira says Anti-Sanctions Day will be marked on Oct. 25. Tens of thousands of people are expected to be bused to the capital.

The minister said Monday that the holiday is “to further amplify the importance of this day to the economic emancipation and well-being of Zimbabwe.”

Dozens of Zimbabwean officials, including President Emmerson Mnangagwa, have faced years of U.S. sanctions over alleged human rights violations. Mnangagwa has turned the sanctions into a rallying cry and blamed them for the collapsing economy.

The U.S. says the sanctions are not against the government at large and do not affect business between the countries.

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When he escaped the armed group that had abducted him at the age of 15, the child soldier swore he’d never go back. But the South Sudanese teen still thinks about returning to the bush, six months after the United Nations secured his release.

“Being asked to kill someone is the hardest thing,” he told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity for his safety.
 
And yet the army offered him a kind of stability he has yet to find outside it. “I had everything, bedding and clothes, I’d just steal what I needed here, I haven’t received what I was expecting,” he said.
 
He lives with family, adrift, waiting to attend a U.N.-sponsored job skills program, struggling to forget his past.

There are an estimated 19,000 child soldiers in South Sudan, one of the highest rates in the world, according to the U.N. As the country emerges from a five-year civil war that killed almost 400,000 people and displaced millions, some worry the fighting could re-ignite if former child soldiers aren’t properly reintegrated into society.

“Without more support, the consequence is that the children will move towards the barracks where there’s social connection, food and something to do,” said William Deng Deng, chairman for South Sudan’s national disarmament demobilization and reintegration commission. “They loot and raid and it will begin to create insecurity.”

Since the fighting broke out in 2013, the U.N. children’s agency has facilitated the release of more than 3,200 child soldiers from both government and opposition forces.
 
Yet even after a peace deal was signed a year ago, the rate of forced child soldier recruitment by both sides in the conflict is increasing, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said in a statement earlier this month.
 
“Ironically, the prospect of a peace deal has accelerated the forced recruitment of children, with various groups now seeking to boost their numbers before they move into the cantonment sites,’ said commission chairwoman Yasmin Sooka. According to the peace deal the government and opposition should have 41,500 troops trained and unified into one national army.

Children who leave armed groups often struggle to adjust.
 
The AP followed several child soldiers among 121 released in February. Many said they are still haunted by their pasts, unable to talk about their experiences for fear of being stigmatized and often incapable of controlling their anger.

“Whenever I think about the bush, even if I’m playing football, I feel like stopping and picking something up and hitting my friends,” said a 13-year-old. The AP is not using the names of the former child soldiers to protect their identities.
 
Abducted by armed men when he was 11, he worked as a spy for an opposition group and at times was forced to witness and partake in horrific acts. He watched a soldier kill a child for refusing to do his chores, and he was forced to set a house on fire, burning alive everyone inside.

“I hear those people screaming in my dreams,” he said.
 
Once released, the former child soldiers are given a three-month reintegration package including food and the opportunity for educational and psycho-social support. However, the system is overburdened and underfunded.

“It’s a lot of work. Sometimes I can only spend 15 to 20 minutes with each child,” said Joseph Ndepi, a social worker with World Vision who is supporting 46 children.
 
Many families don’t know how to deal with their children’s change in behavior once they’ve returned.

“When he initially got out he was so rough he’d beat the kids, and when our mom tried to intervene he’d turn on her,” one 16-year-old said of her elder brother. Both children were abducted and released from armed groups at the same time.
 
While the girl wanted to forget the past, her brother tried to relive it.

At night he’d sneak out of the house and perform mock ambushes to see how close he could get to robbing people’s properties without being caught, the 17-year-old said. Since starting therapy he has stopped the late-night excursions and reined in his temper.  
 
Some of the children’s behavior is related to the power they felt in the army, said Kutiote Justin, a social worker with Catholic Medical Mission Board, an international aid group. One former child soldier he works with insists on calling himself “the commander.”

A lack of resources for reintegration could hurt long-term assistance.

About 420 children have participated in vocational courses to learn professions such as welding, carpentry and tailoring, yet it’s unclear if there will be enough funding to continue past December.
 
Almost $5 million is needed for the next two years but currently only $500,000 is available, according to UNICEF.
 
“Donors aren’t funding to the same extent they used to and now there’s potentially an even greater need,” said spokesman Yves Willemot. And more child soldiers are expected to be released in the near future, he said.

South Sudan’s government isn’t investing in child soldier reintegration, according to the national disarmament, demobilization and reintegration commission. The hope is that once a unity government is formed in mid-November, a key part of the peace deal, the international community will be more inclined to contribute.
 
But the peace deal is fraught with delays and questionable political will. The government hasn’t committed the $100 million it pledged for the peace process, and key elements such as training a unified army have yet to be realized.

Meanwhile, families whose children have returned from the fighting are doing what they can to keep them from leaving again.

In August the 17-year-old felt lonely, so he packed his bags and headed for the bush. He got as far as the main road before his family’s words echoed through his head.

“Stay with your people, don’t go to that place,” he said, recalling their advice. “Just stay here in peace.”  
 

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There’s a familiar trend of fast food chains like KFC and Burger King entering developing countries, where citizens start to see obesity rates increase amid all the new junk food options.

This is not that story, at least in Vietnam. The junk food trend has certainly come to Vietnam already, but now there’s an even newer trend in the country, and it’s the definition of irony:  more Vietnamese citizens are looking for food products that are healthful — only to end up with products that are anything but that.

A Vietnam food puzzle

Sugar is the ingredient that perhaps best exemplifies this irony. The problem is not that Vietnamese are eating large amounts of candy and ice cream, though some are doing that. Instead, they’re buying products like fruit juices and yogurt, not realizing that all the added sugar may outweigh the health benefits of the fruit. Products are packaged in labels that appeal to citizens’ health goals.

This is part of a broader change across Vietnam, where companies are selling more ready-to-eat meals and processed foods to citizens who used to buy vegetables and eggs directly from farms. The change is leading to obvious business opportunities. For instance, the Nutifood Nutrition Food Joint Stock Company recently got an expected debt rating of B+ from Fitch Ratings, which predicts the company will profit from more Vietnamese buying health foods.

“The government has introduced initiatives to address malnutrition and stunting, whose levels remain high by global standards,” Fitch Ratings said in an explanation of its expected rating. “Fitch also expects a high birth-rate and consumers increasingly seeking convenience with nutrition will continue to drive demand for Nutifood’s products, particularly its ready-to-drink products.”

Moderation is the goal

Milk and related products sold by Nutifood and its competitors highlight the balance that is hard to strike in the national diet. Vietnam for years encouraged parents to give their children milk so the next generation would be taller and have stronger bones. Today however, obesity is a bigger problem than undernourishment, having increased 38 percent from 2010 to 2014 — the highest in Southeast Asia. That’s why Vietnam does not use the term “undernourished” but “malnourished” to describe its whole range of nutritional issues.

In other areas there’s low awareness of dietary risks, such as the overreliance on MSG and salt, usually in the form of fish sauce and soy sauce, two very popular ingredients in Vietnamese food. Sugar, however, is the more recent trend. Companies were able to influence nutritional recommendations for decades, by focusing on fat rather than sugar as a source of health complications. So Vietnamese have added sweeteners to their food and drink without a second thought. Go to a cafe, and the waiter will automatically put sugar in an order of coffee or mango juice unless the customer says otherwise. In nearby Indonesia citizens like to joke that they have their sugar with some tea, rather than have tea with sugar. Something similar could be said of Vietnam.

People have many choices

Companies like Pepsi and McDonald’s have tried to put the focus on exercise, rather than diet, for good health. Naturally active lifestyles are decreasing in Vietnam, as people move from the countryside to the cities, and from hard labor to office jobs. Citizens often get on their motorbikes to drive just one block, and walking in the cities, with 100-degree weather and few sidewalks, is hard. On top of that, citizens use new Uber-like services to have drinks or meals delivered. Researchers agree exercise and diet are both important, but the latter has a bigger impact on health.

“Vietnamese consumers care about their health more than ever,” Louise Hawley, managing director of Nielsen Vietnam, said.

That makes awareness all the more important. It is one thing to eat unhealthful food, while not caring about the effects. It is quite another thing to eat unhealthful food, however, because one thinks it’s nutritional.

The growing health concern in Vietnam has to do with not just nutrition, but also air pollution, water quality, and clean supply chains. A Nielsen survey showed health became the top concern of Vietnamese citizens in the second quarter, surpassing job security, cost of living, and work-life balance. “With the current situation relating to pollution and increased consumer awareness,” Hawley said, “health is expected to continue to be a top concern of Vietnamese consumers in the third quarter of 2019.”

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Norwegian police opened fire on an armed man who stole an ambulance in Oslo and reportedly ran down several people Tuesday.

Norwegian broadcaster NRK said that several people were struck by the ambulance, including a baby in a stroller who was taken to a hospital. NRK said that police were looking for a woman who may have been involved, but authorities wouldn’t confirm the report.
 
“We are in control of the ambulance that was stolen,” Oslo police tweeted. “Shots were fired to stop him. He is not in critical condition.”
 
The Aftenposten newspaper published a photo showing a man, wearing green trousers lying next to the vehicle surrounded by police officers.
 
Further details weren’t immediately available.
 
The incident took place in the northern part of Oslo, the Norwegian capital.

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A leading rights group says it has evidence of potential war crimes by Libyan factions fighting a months-long battle for the capital, Tripoli.
 
A report by Amnesty International released Tuesday said warring parties have killed and maimed scores of civilians. The report says both sides are launching indiscriminate attacks and using inaccurate explosive weapons in populated urban areas.
 
Brian Castner, a senior adviser with Amnesty, says such attacks “could amount to war crimes.”
 
Rival militias have been fighting in and around Tripoli since April.
 
A U.N.-supported but weak government holds the capital. Forces associated with a rival government in the country’s east are trying to seize it.
 
The U.N. says the fighting has killed or wounded more than 100 civilians and has displaced more than 100,000.

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