The director of the World Food Program, this year’s winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, again urged billionaires to donate just a few billion to save millions of lives, saying on Friday that the number of people “marching toward starvation “increased from 135 million to 270 million since the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Humanity needs help right now,” said David Beasley. “This is a one-time request. … The world is at a crossroads, and we need billionaires to step up in a way they have never done before. “
The executive director of the UN food agency told a virtual UN press conference that the global wealth of some 2,200 billionaires increased by around $ 2 trillion between April and July as the pandemic raged. He was referring to a study by Swiss bank UBS and accounting firm PwC published last week that said the global wealth of billionaires rose from $ 8 trillion in early April to $ 10.2 trillion in July.
“I only need a few billion to save millions of lives and save humanity from one of the greatest catastrophes since World War II,” Beasley said. “It’s not too much to ask.”
When asked for the names of some of the billionaires he was targeting, Beasley replied, “I can’t hang out with that crowd. I am surrounded by people who are starving. “
He said WFP is “very concerned about 2021” because budgets were not calculated to take into account the economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Beasley said that rich countries invest $ 17 trillion in economic stimulus packages for their citizens to tackle the coronavirus, and “that’s $ 17 trillion that will not be available by 2021.”
This year, he said, many governments reached deeper into their pockets while they could and gave the UN and its agencies more money, but governments are now “exhausted.”
Beasley said that the debts of low and middle-income countries were suspended or deferred until January 2021, and that “that’s $ 8 trillion in debt service” to be due. Furthermore, remittances from foreign workers to families in developing countries have declined and blockades are adding to the deterioration of economies.
“It is a dire situation,” he said.
Beasley said that is why a one-time injection of cash from billionaires is so essential for 2021.
He said humanitarian crises in the world are worsening, with Yemen “the worst of the worst of the worst,” the Sahel region of Africa “without a doubt one of the worst,” the Congo “just awful” and Syria “deteriorating.” He said that many other countries are also deteriorating, including Nigeria, South Sudan and Ethiopia.
Beasley got Covid-19 in March and has resumed his travels, including to Niger in the Sahel, where he was last week when the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize to the World Food Program surprised and delighted the staff and family of the United Nations in general.
The WFP chief said he went to the Sahel because “no one is bringing into the world the calamities that are unfolding in a catastrophic way, and this is a time when we all have to come together.”
“So get to work,” Beasley said. “If we don’t get the support we need, you can literally be watching famines in several dozen countries. But if we get the support we need, we will avoid famine. “
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