Who won the Nobel Peace Prize 2020?
Why the United Nation’s (UN) World Food Programme (WFP) won the Nobel Peace Prize 2020?
The Nobel Peace Prizes have been awarded since 1901 and was not awarded on 19 occasions including 1914-1916, 1918, 1939-1943 among some other years.
On Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to award
the Nobel Peace Prize 2020 to the United Nation’s (UN) World Food Programme
(WFP) for its efforts to combat hunger and for its contribution to bettering
conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for preventing the use of
hunger being weaponised in war and conflict.
About the Nobel Peace Prize
In his will, signed by Alfred Nobel on November 27, 1985, he
mentioned that one part of his fortune that went towards the Nobel Prizes would
be dedicated to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for
fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies
and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.
The Nobel Peace Prizes have been awarded since 1901 and was not awarded on 19 occasions including 1914-1916, 1918, 1939-1943 among some other years.
This is because the statutes of the Nobel Foundation mention, “If none of the works under consideration is found to be of the importance indicated in the first paragraph, the prize money shall be reserved until the following year. If even then, the prize cannot be awarded, the amount shall be added to the Foundation’s restricted funds.” Therefore, fewer awards were given during the two World Wars.
Overall, the prize has been awarded to 135 laureates,
including 107 individuals and 28 organisations. The Office of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been awarded the prize twice.
So far, the youngest laureate is Malala Yousafzai, who was
17 years old when she won in 2014 and the oldest recipient was Joseph Rotblat
who was given the award at the age of 87 in 1995.
So what is the UN WFP and why did it win the prize?
The WFP, which was established in 1961 at the behest of the US president Dwight Eisenhower is the world’s largest humanitarian organisation (certified as the largest by the Guinness World Records in 2002) committed towards its global goal of ending hunger by the year 2030. Eisenhower proposed to the UN General Assembly on September 1, 1960, that a “workable scheme should be devised for providing food aid through the UN system.”
In 2015, eradication of world hunger became one of the UN’s
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and WFP is the UN’s primary instrument in
achieving that goal. Other UN agencies that work towards providing food
security include the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
Other UN SDGs include ending poverty, gender equality, clean
water and sanitation, providing quality education and affordable and clean the energy among others.
WFP was awarded the peace prize “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.”
WFP runs entirely on public donations and was able to raise
over $8 billion last year. Its donors include governments, corporations and
individuals.
How does WFP help people?
WFP provides food assistance in two ways, either by way of providing food or by meeting people’s food-needs by providing cash-based transfers. The cash-based transfers were launched for the first time in 2005 in response to the tsunami in Sri Lanka.
In 2019, WFP provided assistance to close to 100 million
people spread across 88 countries by supplying them with over 4.2 million
metric tonnes of food and $1.2 billion in cash and vouchers.
In 1962, the WFP undertook its first emergency operation
after an earthquake in Iran killed over 12,000 people; in 1963, the the organisation launched its first development programme in Sudan.
In 1989, WFP staged the largest humanitarian airdrop in a history involving 20 cargo aircraft when it launched “Operation Lifeline Sudan” to provide assistance to millions of people affected by the civil war that played out in the southern part of the country.
More recently, the organisation has provided food aid to
over 4.5 million victims of the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, in 2011 to
millions of people affected by the Syrian conflict, in 2014 to people affected
by the Ebola outbreak and in 2015 to the Nepal earthquake survivors.
How does WFP measure hunger?
The organisation estimates hunger by the prevalence of
undernourishment. The UN defines undernourished or food-deprived people as
those individuals whose food intake falls below the minimum level of dietary
energy requirements.
These dietary energy requirements are set by sex and age
groups in consultation between the FAO, UN and WHO. The energy requirement is
the amount of energy from food required to balance energy expenditure in order
to maintain body-weight, body composition and a level of necessary and
desirable physical activity that is consistent with long-term good health, as
per the UN.
According to current estimates, about 8.9 per cent of the
world’s population or about 690 million people are hungry and as per WFP if the
current trends continue, by 2030 there will be 840 million hungry people.
Further, about 135 million suffer from acute hunger mainly as a result of man-made conflicts, climate change and economic downturns. WFP estimates that the COVID-19 pandemic could possibly double that figure.
Does WFP work in India?
Yes, WFP has been working in India since 1963 and has
transitioned from food distribution to providing technical assistance as India
became self-sufficient in cereal production.
One-fourth of the world’s undernourished population is in
India and about 21 per cent of the population live on less than $1.90 a day.
At the moment, WFP is working to improve the government’s
targeted public distribution system (TPDS) to ensure that food reaches those
that need it the most. It is also working with the government to improve the
nutritional value of the Midday Meal programme and is using its own software
called the Vulnerability and Analysis Mapping to identify the most food
insecure groups in the country.
Recently, WFP has partnered with the government of Uttar Pradesh to set up over 200 supplementary nutrition production units to support distribution under the government’s Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) a scheme that provides nutrition services to children below the age of six.
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