The World Food Programme (WFP) has been praised by world leaders and humanitarian groups after it was awarded 2020’s Nobel Peace Prize.
The UN entity, which provided food to 100 million people last year, praised its staff after taking the honor – the 101st time that the Nobel Peace Prize has been handed out.
Dan Smith, the director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, told CNN he saw the decision as “positive.”
“There’s an urgency to the issue at the moment, because after decades of progress, world hunger has started to rise in the last four years, driven primarily by climate change,” he said.
The award could also serve as a rebuke to governments that discredit and pull funding from international groups – a point the Nobel committee did not duck from making.
“Multilateralism seems to have a lack of respect these days,” its chair Berit Reiss-Andersen said on Friday.
“When you follow international debate and discourse, it’s definitely a tendency that international institutions seem to be discredited more than, let’s say, 20 years ago,” she said.
“When the UN was founded, it was exactly on a great emphasis on the universalism of the world,” Reiss-Andersen added. “There also is a universal responsibility for the conditions of human mankind.”
We’re wrapping up our live coverage, but you can read more about the Nobel Committee’s decision here.
David Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Programme, reacted with joy and disbelief to the news of his organization’s Nobel win.
“I can’t believe it!” he told staff from Niamey, Niger.
The World Food Programme praised its staff after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, saying they “put their lives on the line every day.”
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director of the World Health Organization which had itself been a frontrunner for the award, praised the decision on Twitter.
“Huge admiration and respect for the life-saving work you do for people in need everywhere,” he wrote.
Tunisian actress Hend Sabry, an ambassador for the agency, wrote that the WFP “is mainly a web of wonderful people from all around the world, doing their best to fight hunger.”
The World Food Programme warned in April that the planet is facing multiple famines of “biblical proportions” in just a matter of months, with the coronavirus pandemic potentially pushing an additional 130 million people to the brink of starvation.
Famines could take hold in “about three dozen countries” in a worst-case scenario, the executive director of the body said in a stark address. Ten of those countries already have more than 1 million people on the verge of starvation, he said.
WFP Executive Director David Beasley cited conflict, an economic recession, a decline in aid and a collapse in oil prices as factors likely to lead to vast food shortages, and urged swift action to avert disaster.
“While dealing with a Covid-19 pandemic, we are also on the brink of a hunger pandemic,” Beasley told the UN’s security council. “There is also a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of Covid-19 than from the virus itself.”
The WFP had previously warned that 2020 would be a devastating year for numerous countries ravaged by poverty or war, with 135 million people facing crisis levels of hunger or worse. Their updated projections nearly doubled that number.
The World Food Programme has thanked the Nobel Committee for its selection.
Berit Reiss-Andersen made a pointed rebuke of populism as she answered questions from journalists about the award of the Nobel Peace Prize.
“When you follow international debate and discourse, it’s definitely a tendency that international institutions seem to be discredited more than, let’s say, 20 years ago,” she said.
“It is part of populism that it has nationalistic flavor … everybody, every nation, supporting their own interests.”
“When the UN was founded, it was exactly on a great emphasis on the universalism of the world,” Reiss-Andersen added. “There also is a universal responsibility for the conditions of human mankind.”
“If you ask anybody within the UN system, they will claim that it is harder these days to get the necessary financial support for the different activities of the different agencies,” she said.
Honoring the World Food Programme with the 2020 Peace Prize, the Nobel Committee sent a message to governments around the world, pleading with them not to cut financial contributions to international humanitarian groups.
“This is also a call to the international community not to underfund the World Food Programme,” Berit Reiss-Andersen said,
“This is an obligation, in our mind, of all states of the world to ensure that people are not starving.”
The organization has suffered from a drop in contributions in recent years, as countries including the United States lower funding for global organizations.
In 2017, its executive director David Beasley wrote: “This is my message to President Trump and his friends and allies. Proposed massive cuts to food assistance would do long-term harm to our national security interests.”
“Multilateralism seems to have a lack of respect these days,” Reiss-Andersen said on Friday. “The Nobel Committee definitely wants to emphasise this aspect.”
Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, noted the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on global food supplies as she revealed the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
“The coronavirus pandemic has contributed to a strong upsurge in the number of victims of hunger in the world,” she said.
“In the face of the pandemic, the World Food Programme has demonstrated an impressive ability to intensify its efforts.”
“As the organization itself has stated: until the day we have a vaccine, food is the best vaccine against chaos,” Reiss-Andersen said.
The UN’s World Food Programme has won the Nobel Peace Prize.
The initiative was created in 1961, and today provides food to over 90 million people a year.
It was honored “for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.”
The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, one of the world’s most coveted awards, is being announced in Norway, Oslo.
Follow along for live updates and reaction.
Last year’s Nobel Peace Prize was won by Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian Prime Minister who helped end a long-running war between his country and neighboring Eritrea.
Before him, the coveted award has been claimed by a number of leading politicians, revolutionary figures and global organizations.
Four US Presidents have won the award; Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, who triumphed in 2009 for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
They have been joined by a number of revolutionary leaders and leading political figures, including Nelson Mandela, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Polish dissident Lech Walesa.
International organizations are occasionally honored too; the United Nations won the award in 2001, and the European Union joined them in 2012.
Two years later, Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai became the youngest winner of the award, aged just 17.
The popular revolution in Sudan, which ousted longtime President Omar al-Bashir, is cited by many experts as the event most likely to be recognized by judges.
Bashir’s 30-year rule over the northeastern African country ended when he was arrested in an April military coup. Protests had begun in late 2018 over the rising cost of living, and they escalated into a push for Bashir’s removal from office, with mass rallies and sit-ins outside the presidential compound and army headquarters.
Months of action ultimately brought about a power-sharing agreement signed by members of Sudan’s military leadership and the country’s pro-democracy movement.
The revolution propelled Alaa Salah to fame after video footage of her leading protest chants went viral, and the activist has been tipped as a potential victor.
After a years-long assault on press freedom in several corners of the world, some believe that a group working to protect reporters could be honored. The Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders are both mentioned as contenders.
Others believe the committee could address the fight against climate change, which it last did when it highlighted the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former US Vice President Al Gore in 2007.
If it does, teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg could be among the winners – while some are suggesting British environmental broadcaster David Attenborough, nearly seven decades Thunberg’s senior, could be honored.
A number of world leaders have also been mentioned in connection to the prize, including New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
The bookmakers’ favorite to win the prize is the World Health Organization (WHO), after a year in which it coordinated the global response to the coronavirus crisis.
The group has been criticized from some corners for its role – most notably, US President Donald Trump has announced that the US will pull out of the organization – so its potential selection could touch a political nerve that the committee has not shied away from prodding in the past.
But experts are less sure that the WHO will be honored. “I’m quite skeptical, primarily because of the criticism that has been waged against the WHO,” Henrik Urdal, the director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, told CNN. “The jury is still out when it comes to the way the WHO has handled the pandemic.”
The last major international organization to win the award was the European Union, which was honored in 2012 for six decades of work.
But other global programs could be in the running this year; the United Nations is a contender in its 75th year of existence, and the World Food Programme, which provides food to over 90 million people a year, has also been mooted.
For the 101st time in its lengthy and occasionally controversial history, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is set to be named.
This year’s award arrives in a year dominated by conflict, uncertainty, and a pandemic that has claimed more than 1 million lives worldwide – lending an amplified significance to the prize, and leading to speculation among Nobel watchers that the committee could acknowledge the Covid-19 crisis in its decision-making.
As always, the names of the contenders are fiercely guarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee. There are 318 candidates, of which 211 are individuals and 107 are organizations, and as per tradition their names will not be divulged for 50 years.
But experts predict a diverse range of candidates, ranging from world leaders to activists to international organizations.
“I’m less sure (of who will win) this year than I have been for a long time,” Dan Smith, the director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, told CNN last week.
The winner will be announced at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo at 11:00 a.m. local time (5 a.m. ET).
