UN Food Program wins Nobel Peace Prize | World

According to the Swedish Academy, the program was awarded “for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to the improvement of peace conditions in conflict-affected areas and for acting as an engine of efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict “.

The organization operates in emergency situations and in conflict-affected countries, where there is more risk of malnutrition.

World Food Program spokesman Tomson Phiri said that the agency award “is a moment of pride”. He was attending a weekly meeting at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva when he was informed of the Nobel.

According to the Nobel organization, the program would already be worthy of the award without the pandemic, but with Covid-19 the reasons became more evident: food is less available. In this scenario, “the UN program has demonstrated an impressive ability to redouble its efforts,” the committee said.

“This year we had to respond to a call to action,” Phiri said, referring to helping victims of hunger during the new coronavirus pandemic.

In making a decision, the organization took into account that multilateral cooperation is necessary to combat hunger and there appears to be a lack of respect for multilateralism in the recent past.

The body linked to the UN is the largest entity that fights the problems of hunger and promotes food security in the world; Last year, the Food Program helped nearly one million people in 88 countries.

The Nobel Prize winner is decided by a committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament.

Winners from other years

Another 134 people or institutions have received this award in the past. In 2019, the winner was Abiy Ahmed, Prime Minister of Ethiopia. The previous year, Denis Mukwege, a Congolese, and Nadia Murad, an Iraqi, won the Nobel Peace Prize (both are militants fighting to end sexual violence in wars and armed conflicts).

Juan Manuel Santos, the former president of Colombia, was the last Latin American to win the award.

There were other years in which the winner was the institutions: in 2012, it was the European Union; the following year, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and in 2017, the International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons.

This year the following awards have already been awarded:

• Literature: Luck Louise
• Physical: Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez
• Chemistry: Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna
• Medicine: Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice

On Monday (12) the Nobel Prize in Economics will be announced, the last award of 2020.