Peace prize winner puts focus on hunger

UNITED NATIONS — Even before covid-19 became an issue, World Food Program chief David Beasley was warning global leaders that the world in 2020 would face the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II.

He said that was because of wars in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, locust swarms in Africa, frequent natural disasters, and economic crises including in Lebanon, Congo, Sudan and Ethiopia. Then came covid-19 which quickly became a pandemic that has swept the world, escalating the need for food — and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says it is still not under control.

Beasley, who got covid-19 in April, has spent the months since he recovered reaching out to world leaders and visiting stricken countries with a new warning that he delivered to the U.N. Security Council last month: Millions of people are closer to starvation because of the deadly combination of conflict, climate change and the coronavirus pandemic.

He said the World Food Program and its partners were going all out to reach as many as 138 million people this year — “the biggest scale-up in our history.”

Beasley urged donors, including governments and institutions, to help, and he made a special appeal to the more than 2,000 billionaires in the world, with a combined net worth of $8 trillion.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday to the U.N. food agency is a tribute not only to its work in the even greater humanitarian crisis than Beasley envisioned in this covid-ravaged year, but as the Nobel committee made clear it is a plea for unity and multilateral cooperation to tackle global challenges.

Beasley called the award “a humbling, moving recognition of the work of WFP staff who lay their lives on the line every day to bring food and assistance for close to 100 million hungry children, women and men across the world — people whose lives are often brutally torn apart by instability, insecurity and conflict.”

He also paid tribute to the agency’s government, organizations and private sector partners who help the hungry and vulnerable.

“Every one of the 690 million hungry people in the world today has the right to live peacefully and without hunger,” Beasley said in a statement on the WFP website.

“Today, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has turned the global spotlight on them and on the devastating consequences of conflict. Climate shocks and economic pressures have further compounded their plight,” he said. “And now, a global pandemic with its brutal impact on economies and communities, is pushing millions more to the brink of starvation.”

While the food crisis is mainly the result of conflict, Beasley said in April that he raised the prospect of a hunger pandemic because of the economic impact of covid-19.