The 2020 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to the World Food Programme (WFP) for the efforts to combat hunger, and improve conditions for peace in conflict areas.
After the announcement of this year's Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee hopes to turn the eyes of the world toward those millions of people who suffer from hunger or facing the threat persistently.
The WFP is the largest humanitarian organization in the globe, addressing hunger and promoting food security. In 2019, the global organization provided assistance to around 100 million people in 88 countries where residents have been facing serious food insecurity and hunger issues.
Last year, 135 million people all over the world suffered from acute hunger— the highest number in the past several years and mostly caused by the war, as well as armed conflict.
Later, the arrival of the Coronavirus pandemic contributed to a strong upsurge in the number of victims of hunger in the world. In countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Yemen, South Sudan, and Burkina Faso, the violent conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic jointly increased the number of people living on the brink of starvation.
But during the pandemic time, the WFP has contributed to making the situation better. The organization said that "until the day we have a medical vaccine, food is the best vaccine against chaos."
The WFP plays a key role in global cooperation in making food security as a tool to establish peace. The Nobel Committee wrote in the statement, "The work of the World Food Programme to the benefit of humankind is an endeavor that all the nations of the world should be able to endorse and support."
Nobel Peace Prize
Here are the previous winners of the Nobel Peace Prize in the past five years:
• 2019: Abiy Ahmed Ali won this award for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with Eritrea.
• 2018: Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad received the honor for their contribution to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict
• 2017: The award was given to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such war weapons.
• 2016: Juan Manuel Santos received the prestigious award for his resolute efforts to end Colombia's more than 50-year-long civil war.
• 2015: National Dialogue Quartet was awarded for its contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011.
