UN Food Agency, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Warns 2021 Will Be Worse Than 2020

The director of the World Food Program (Wfp) says the Nobel Peace Prize has given the UN agency a spotlight and a megaphone to warn world leaders that next year will be worse than this year , and without billions of dollars “we will go through famines of biblical proportions in 2021.”

David Beasley said in an interview with The Associated Press that the Norwegian Nobel Committee was looking at the work the agency does every day in conflicts, disasters and refugee camps, often putting the lives of employees at risk to feed to millions of hungry people, but also to send “a message to the world that things are getting worse … (and) that our hardest job is yet to come.”

“It was very timely because we have been fighting to outperform the chorus,” Beasley said of last month’s award, noting that the news is dominated by the US elections and the Covid-19 pandemic, and the difficulty of attracting the global attention. about “the charade we face all over the world.”

“So this was really a gift from above,” said Beasley, recalling the surprise and delight of Wfp’s 20,000 employees around the world, and his own shock at being interrupted during a meeting in Niger in the Sahel region of Africa. With the news.

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Beasley recalled his warning to the UN Security Council in April that while the world was grappling with the coronavirus pandemic, it was also “on the brink of a hunger pandemic” that could lead to “multiple famines of biblical proportions” in about few months if no immediate action was taken.

“We were able to avoid it in 2020 … because world leaders responded with money, stimulus packages, debt deferrals,” he said.

Now, Beasley said, Covid-19 is on the rise again, economies continue to deteriorate, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, and there is another wave of lockdowns and shutdowns.

But he said that the money that was available in 2020 will not be available in 2021, so he has been using the Nobel to meet leaders virtually and in person, speak to parliaments and give speeches to sensitize those in power about “this tragedy that we face, crises that are really going to be extraordinary in the next 12 to 18 months, who knows ”.

“Everybody now wants to meet with the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize,” Beasley said, explaining that he now has 45 minutes instead of 15 minutes with the leaders and can dig deeper and explain how bad things are going to be. next year and how leaders are going to have to prioritize programs. “And the response has been really good,” he said.

“I tell them that they will not have enough money to finance all the projects that they historically finance,” he said.

“Those are important things,” Beasley said, but he compared the next crisis to the Titanic and said that “right now, we really have to focus on icebergs, and icebergs are famine, starvation, destabilization and migration.”

Beasley said Wfp needs $ 15 billion (NZ $ 22 billion) next year, $ 5 billion just to avoid famine and $ 10 billion to carry out the agency’s global programs, including malnourished children and school lunches, which are often the only meal young people get.

“If I could get it together with our normal money, we would prevent famine around the world” and minimize destabilization and migration. he said.

Aside from raising extra money from governments, Beasley said, his other “great hope” is that the billionaires who have made billions during the Covid-19 pandemic will step up just once. He plans to start spreading this message probably in December or January.

In April, Beasley said 135 million people faced “starvation levels in crisis or worse.” Then a Wfp analysis showed that Covid-19 could push an additional 130 million people “to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020.”

He said in Wednesday’s virtual interview from Rome, where Wfp is based, that while famine was averted this year, the number of people facing crisis levels of hunger is rising to 270 million.

“There are about three dozen countries that could possibly go into famine if we don’t have the money we need,” Beasley said.

According to a joint analysis by Wfp and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in October, 20 countries are likely to “face possible spikes in acute food insecurity” in the next three to six months, “and require urgent attention” .

Of these, Yemen, South Sudan, northeastern Nigeria and Burkina Faso have some areas that “have reached a critical state of starvation after years of conflict or other shocks,” UN agencies said, and any further deterioration in the next few months “could lead to a risk of famine.”

Other countries that require “urgent attention” are Afghanistan, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Lebanon, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Sierra Leone, Somali, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, they said.

Beasley said a Covid-19 vaccine “will create some optimism that hopefully will help boost economies around the world, particularly Western economies.” But the Wfp chief executive said there has already been $ 17 billion (NZ $ 25 billion) of economic stimulus this year “and we are not going to have it globally.”

“We are very, very, very concerned” that with the resumption of deferred debt payments for low- and middle-income countries in January, the new lockdowns and the rippling economic shock, “2021 will be a very bad year.” Beasley said.