The Nobel peace prize as you might know, is known around the world as one of the greatest awards a human can achieve and has been going on since 1901 when Alfred Nobel first gave out the award. According to Nobel’s will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who in the preceding year “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.” With 2020’s winner being announced October 9^th, this Friday its my honor to say this year’s Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the World Food Programme (WFP) for What CNN says in for “efforts to combat hunger” and its “contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas.” The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which presented the award in Oslo on Friday, also described the organization as “a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.”

The organization was extremely important this year especially because the impact of coronavirus pandemic on global food supplies around the world. “In the face of the pandemic, the World Food Program has demonstrated an impressive ability to intensify its efforts,” Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said as she announced the prize in Oslo. The World Food Program, established in 1961 after a proposal by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, has been a major behind-the-scenes player helping people affected by some of the world’s most devastating humanitarian disasters, including famine in Ethiopia in the 1980s, wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the 2004 Asian tsunami and the 2010 Haiti earthquake. In many nations, particularly those at war, the combination of conflict and the pandemic has sharply increased the number of people on the brink of starvation. As the global fallout from the pandemic began this spring, the World Food Program estimated that the number of people experiencing life-threatening levels of food insecurity could more than double this year, to 265 million which is insane. With these numbers so high it only made sense to give them the award because what they do is extremely important to the world right now and they are saving lives and keeping people feed in a very tuff and unusual time like this.