Iran Press/ America: The chairwoman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, revealed the 2020 laureate at the Nobel Institute in Oslo, where coronavirus restrictions drastically reduced the usual throng of reporters in attendance.
Reiss-Andersen said the committee gave the award to the WFP because it wanted to “turn the eyes of the world to the millions of people who suffer from or face the threat of hunger”. Hunger, she said, was used as a “weapon of war and conflict”.
The award was also a call to the international community to fund the UN agency adequately and to ensure people were not starving, she said. She said the WFP would have been a worthy recipient of the prize without the coronavirus pandemic. But the virus had strengthened the reasons for giving it to the WFP, including the need for “multilateralism” in a time of global crisis.
“It’s a very important UN organisation. The UN plays a key role in upholding human rights,” she said, adding: “Food is one of our most basic needs.”
In its citation, the committee praised the WFP for its “efforts for combating hunger” and its “contribution to creating peace in conflicted-affected areas”. The agency acted “as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict”, it said.
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