ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュのNobel Peace Prize awarded to UN's World Food Programme

The need for international solidarity and multilateral cooperation is more conspicuous than ever. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2020 to the World Food Programme (WFP) 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 World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organisation addressing hunger and promoting food security. In 2019, the WFP provided assistance to close to 100 million people in 88 countries who are victims of acute food insecurity and hunger. In 2015, eradicating hunger was adopted as one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The WFP is the UN’s primary instrument for realising this goal. In recent years, the situation has taken a negative turn. In 2019, 135 million people suffered from acute hunger, the highest number in many years. Most of the increase was caused by war and armed conflict.

The coronavirus pandemic has contributed to a strong upsurge in the number of victims of hunger in the world. In countries such as Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, South Sudan and Burkina Faso, the combination of violent conflict and the pandemic has led to a dramatic rise in the number of people living on the brink of starvation. In the face of the pandemic, the World Food Programme has demonstrated an impressive ability to intensify its efforts. As the organisation itself has stated, “Until the day we have a medical vaccine, food is the best vaccine against chaos.”

The world is in danger of experiencing a hunger crisis of inconceivable proportions if the World Food Programme and other food assistance organisations do not receive the financial support they have requested.

The link between hunger and armed conflict is a vicious circle: war and conflict can cause food insecurity and hunger, just as hunger and food insecurity can cause latent conflicts to flare up and trigger the use of violence. We will never achieve the goal of zero hunger unless we also put an end to war and armed conflict.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to emphasise that providing assistance to increase food security not only prevents hunger, but can also help to improve prospects for stability and peace. The World Food Programme has taken the lead in combining humanitarian work with peace efforts through pioneering projects in South America, Africa and Asia.

The World Food Programme was an active participant in the diplomatic process that culminated in May 2018 in the UN Security Council’s unanimous adoption of Resolution 2417, which for the first time explicitly addressed the link between conflict and hunger. The Security Council also underscored UN Member States’ obligation to help ensure that food assistance reaches those in need, and condemned the use of starvation as a method of warfare.

With this year’s award, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to turn the eyes of the world towards the millions of people who suffer from or face the threat of hunger. The World Food Programme plays a key role in multilateral cooperation on making food security an instrument of peace, and has made a strong contribution towards mobilising UN Member States to combat the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict. The organisation contributes daily to advancing the fraternity of nations referred to in Alfred Nobel’s will. As the UN’s largest specialised agency, the World Food Programme is a modern version of the peace congresses that the Nobel Peace Prize is intended to promote.

The work of the World Food Programme to the benefit of humankind is an endeavour that all the nations of the world should be able to endorse and support.

Oslo, 9 October 2020

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Acceptance speech by Executive Director David Beasley on behalf of the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2020 World Food Programme (WFP). Oslo, 10 December, 2020.

Waking up this morning in this beautiful city of Rome, it is hard to imagine that in about 400 AD this city experienced a massive famine, it ended up killing almost 90% of its population. Now students of history associate something else with that ancient date: the beginning of the Fall of the Roman Empire. Now, did the famine cause the fall? Or did the fall cause the famine? I think the answer is yes – both.

Waking up in this wealthy, modern, technologically advanced world, it’s hard to imagine us going through a famine like that. But my tragic duty today is to tell you: famine is at humanity’s doorstep. For millions and millions of people on earth.

Failure to prevent famine in our day will destroy so many lives and cause the fall of much we hold dear.

On behalf of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, our Board, our sister agencies, our incredible partners and donors. And on behalf of 19,000 peacemakers at the World Food Programme, including those who came before us, and especially those who died in the line of duty and their families who carry on. And on behalf of the 100 million people we serve – to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, thank you, for this great honor.

Also, thank you for acknowledging our work of using food to combat hunger, to mitigate against destabilization of nations, to prevent mass migration, to end conflict and … to create stability and peace.

We believe food is the pathway to peace.

I wish today that I could speak of how working together we could end world hunger for all the 690 million people who go to bed hungry every night. But, today we have a crisis at hand.

This Nobel Peace Prize is more than a thank you. It is a call to action. Because of so many wars, climate change, the widespread use of hunger as a political and military weapon, and a global health pandemic that makes all of that exponentially worse – 270 million people are marching toward starvation. Failure to address their needs will cause a hunger pandemic which will dwarf the impact of COVID.

And if that’s not bad enough, out of that 270 million, 30 million depend on us 100% for their survival.

How will humanity respond?

Let me tell you why what we do at the World Food Programme works.

First, food is sacred. Anyone who has sat down to a Thanksgiving or a holiday meal, or taken communion, attended a Seder, fasted for Ramadan or made a food offering at a Buddhist temple knows that.

And every human, whether they are people of faith or not, knows the power of food not only to sustain us, but bring us together in our common humanity.

Here’s the second reason the World Food Programme works: because what the 19,000 of us are doing is an act of love. Dr. King, Nobel Laureate in 1964 said, “Love is the most durable power in the world.”

And, like Dr. King, from a very young age, I learned this teaching from Jesus of Nazareth, as he taught from the Torah: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” I have come to understand that a better translation of what Jesus actually said is: “Love your neighbor as your equal.” Think for a moment what that really means.

Imagine every woman, man, girl and boy we share this planet with is our equal … and if we would just love them as such. Imagine what that would do to war, to conflict, to racism, to division, and to discrimination of every kind.

What warms my heart is this: 100 million of my equals – my neighbors – received food from the World Food Programme this past year and we averted famine.

But what tears me up inside is this: this coming year, millions and millions and millions of my equals – my neighbors, your neighbors – are marching to the brink of starvation.

We stand at what may be the most ironic moment in modern history. On the one hand – after a century of massive strides in eliminating extreme poverty, today those 270 million of our neighbors are on the brink of starvation. That’s more than the entire population of Western Europe.

On the other hand, there is $400 trillion dollars of wealth in our world today. Even at the height of the COVID pandemic, in just 90 days, an additional $2.7 trillion dollars of wealth was created. And we only need $5 billion dollars to save 30 million lives from famine.

What am I missing here?

A lot of my friends – and leaders around the world – have said to me: “You’ve got the greatest job in the world, saving the lives of millions of people.”

Well, here is what I tell them: “I don’t go to bed at night thinking about the children we saved, I go to bed weeping over the children we could not save. And, when we don’t have enough money, nor the access we need, we have to decide which children eat and which children do not eat, which children live, which children die. How would you like that job?”

Please … don’t ask us to choose who lives and who dies.

In the spirit of Alfred Nobel, as inscribed on this medal – “peace and brotherhood” – let’s feed them all.

Food is the pathway to peace. The World Food Programme.