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UNITED NATIONS: Even before the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the head of the World Food Program (WFP), David Beasley, warned that the world would face its worst humanitarian crisis in 2020 since World War II.
That was due to 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, increasing the need for food, and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says it is not yet under control.
Beasley, who contracted COVID-19 in April, has spent the months since he recovered by reaching out to world leaders and visiting affected countries with a new warning: Millions of people are closer to starvation due to the deadly combination of conflict, climate change and pandemic.
He said WFP and its partners were doing their best to reach 138 million people this year, “the largest expansion in our history.”
Beasley urged donors, including governments and institutions, to help, and made a special appeal to the world’s more than 2,000 billionaires, with a combined net worth of $ 8 trillion, to open their bank accounts.
The presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday to the UN food agency was not only a tribute to their work in this year devastated by COVID, but, as the Nobel committee made clear, it was also a call to unity and multilateral cooperation to address global challenges. as has the WFP.
Beasley called the award “a moving and moving recognition of the work of WFP staff who risk their lives every day to bring food and assistance to nearly 100 million hungry children, women and men around the world, people whose Lives are often brutally shattered by instability, insecurity and conflict. “
It also paid tribute to the agency’s governance, organizations, and private sector partners.
“Each of the 690 million hungry people in the world today has the right to live in peace and without hunger,” said Beasley.
While the food crisis is primarily the result of conflict, Beasley said in April that it raised the possibility of a hunger pandemic due to the economic impact of COVID-19.
He told the UN Security Council last month that 30 million people who depend solely on WFP for food would die unaided, and that WFP needed $ 4.9 billion to feed them for a year.
“We are doing everything we can to prevent the dam from breaking,” Beasley said. “But without the resources we need, a wave of hunger and famine still threatens to spread throughout the world. It will overwhelm nations … already weakened by years of conflict and instability. “
WFP’s logistics operation is key to delivering food to tens of millions, and blockades and border closures have created immense difficulties for the agency.
Beasley has emphasized that containment measures must be balanced with keeping supply chains open, having raised concerns about closures preventing food and medical deliveries.
“There is a grave danger that many more people will die from the broader economic and social consequences of COVID-19 than from the virus itself, especially in Africa,” he previously stated.
