United Nations World Food Programme wins Nobel Peace Prize 2020

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The UNs World Food Program has been awarded the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize. Source: CC
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In 2019 it helped fight hunger to 100 million people in 88 countries. Source: CC
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WFP is the largest humanitarian organization in the world that promotes food security. Source: CC

The organisation looks out for the elimination and prevention of global famine and has played an important role fighting against the food crisis during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) has been awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize 2020, as the Norwegian Nobel Committee has announced this month.

The Programme has been rewarded 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’, declared the president of the Nobel Committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen. ‘The Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to turn the eyes of the world towards the millions of people who suffer and face the threat of hunger. Until the day we have a medical vaccine, food is the best vaccine against chaos’, added.

The WFP is the largest humanitarian organisation in the world that promotes food security. In 2019, the WFP provided assistance to around 100 million people from 88 countries to fight against hunger and food insecurity. The UN’s Programme succeeds to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abyi Ahmed, who won the Nobel Peace Prize 2019 for achieving a peace process with Eritrea.

The Nobel Peace Prize

This year, there were 318 candidates (211 persons and 107 organisations) for the prize, which is the fourth largest number in the history of the prize. Among the most distinguished, there were climate activist Greta Thunberg, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, or the director of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom.

It is not the first time an organisation wins the Nobel Peace Prize. The International Committee of the Red Cross has won the prize up to three times and other UN agencies have previously been awarded with this prize too.

This year’s award ceremonies will be held on the 10th December, coinciding with the anniversary of the death of the Nobel Prizes founder, Albert Nobel. Due to Covid-19, the ceremony has been moved from the Oslo City Hall (where it has been celebrated since 1990) to the Auditorium of the University of Oslo, a smaller space, which had been the award ceremony scene in 1947 and 1989.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner has been the last to reveal, after the announcement of the Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Literature and Economic Sciences Prizes laureates.