UN’s World Food Program wins Nobel Peace Prize for hunger fight
The World Food Program won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for fighting hunger and seeking to end its use as “a weapon of war and conflict” at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has driven millions more people to the brink of starvation.
Announcing the prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said it wished “to turn the eyes of the world towards the millions of people who suffer from or face the threat of hunger.”
The committee also said it hoped that bestowing the prize on the U. N. agency would highlight the need to strengthen global solidarity and cooperation in an era of go-it-alone nationalism.
“We are sending a signal to every nation who raises objections to international cooperation,” committee chair Berit Reiss-Andersen said. “We are sending a signal to this type of nationalism where the responsibility for global affairs is not being faced.”
The Rome-based agency was established in 1961 at the behest of U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower and has brought aid to multiple crises, including Ethiopia’s famine of 1984, the Asian tsunami of 2004 and the Haiti earthquake of 2010.
It continues to bring assistance to the world’s most dangerous and precarious places, from airdropping food in South Sudan and Syria to creating an emergency delivery service that kept aid flowing even as pandemic restrictions grounded commercial flights.
In bestowing what is arguably the world’s most prestigious prize on the World Food Program, the Norwegian committee is
honoring an organization headed by David Beasley, a Republican former South Carolina governor nominated for the job by President Donald Trump.
Beasley said the prize rightly goes to his entire team.
“I know I’m not deserving of an award like this — but all the men and women around the world in the World Food Program and our partners who put their lives on the line every day to help those in need, that is inspiring and encouraging,” he told The Associated Press by phone from Niger.
WFP staffers in Niger greeted Beasley with cheers and applause as he emerged to address a crowd after the announcement. “I didn’t win it, you won it,” he told them.
The award comes as Trump has pulled the United States out of several U.N. bodies, including the Human Rights Council and UNESCO, the cultural agency. He has also repeatedly criticized the U. N.’s World Health Organization over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and his administration has said the United States will leave it in July.
In light of that pullback, the choice of the World Food Program was partic
ularly notable because the U. S. remains by far its biggest donor, the agency has been run by an American for nearly 40 years, and Beasley has been a rare recent example of U.S.-led internationalism.
The Nobel Committee said the problem of hunger has again become more acute in recent years, not least because the pandemic has added to the hardship already faced by millions.
WFP estimates that 690 million people worldwide suffer some form of hunger today.
U. N. Secretary- General Antonio Guterres said he was delighted the award went to “the world’s first responder on the front lines of food insecurity.” It was the ninth award for the U.N. or one of its agencies.
“In a world of plenty, it is unconscionable that hundreds of millions go to bed each night hungry,” Guterres said. “Millions more are now on the precipice of famine due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The Nobel Committee called on governments to ensure that WFP and other aid organizations receive the financial support needed to feed millions in countries such as Yemen, Congo, Nigeria and South Sudan.