Nobel award to WFP shows unwillingness to offend the US

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) was awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for its efforts to combat hunger and improve conditions for peace in war-hit areas.

While many applauded the result and acknowledged WFP’s contributions, it was still unexpected since the World Health Organization had been favored, as it is leading the global fight against COVID-19.

Some observers said WFP is a choice made by the Norwegian Nobel Committee to avoid controversy, noting that the choice could not change the fact that the peace prize has a record of being used for political manipulation, especially when it comes to nominating candidates against China.

More than 300 individuals and organizations had been nominated for this year’s peace prize.

Compared with the WHO, the WFP was a safer choice for the committee, as it has not been criticized by the US, Zhang Yiwu, a professor at Peking University, told the Global Times. “The committee may not have wanted to offend the US,” he said.

The WHO has been criticized by US President Donald Trump for the COVID-19 pandemic, who announced a cut in financial support to the organization.

Experts noted that, in recent years, more people, especially the Chinese, have seen through the true value of the Nobel Peace Prize – a political tool manipulated by Western powers.

In addition to the above mentioned, this year some nominees were from China. A Norwegian member of parliament Guri Melby announced on her Twitter account in October 2019 that she has nominated the people of Hong Kong, more specifically the (anti-)extradition bill movement for the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize.

Ilham Tohti, a former university lecturer who was serving a life sentence for separatism in China, was also on the nominee list.

Rioters in Hong Kong have hurt the city’s social order and people’s livelihood, and Ilham has been proven to be a separatist who violated the law. Nominating these people or people who have been tagged as “dissidents in China” by the West once again showed the committee’s longstanding ideological bias against China, Zhang said. “The Nobel Peace Prize has been deeply drawn into modern politics, and with various forces from states, organizations and politicians across the world, it has nothing related to fairness or justice when it’s related to China,” Zhang said.