In A Fight To Save The World From Hunger…
How the United Nations World Food Programme is helping millions of people across the world?
The Nobel Prize
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has won the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize. The WFP is the leading humanitarian organisation and the international community has committed to ending hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition by 2030.
Usually, we see individuals receiving the Nobel Prizes and Denis Mukwege & Nadia Murad, Kailash Satyarthi & Malala Yousafzai, Barack H. Obama are some of the people who have won in the past years. However, the fact that surprised us is that 28 organisations have won Nobel Peace Prizes until now. This list includes International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), European Union (EU) among others.
So, what is WFP and what did it do to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for this year?
All About WFP
WFP was created on the request of U.S President Dwight Eisenhower in 1962 as an experiment to provide food aid via the UN system. WFP’s efforts focus on emergency assistance, relief and rehabilitation, development aid and special operations. Two-thirds of the organisation’s work is in countries impacted by conflict where people are three times more likely to be undernourished than those living in countries which have no conflict.
In emergencies, WFP provides food assistance to the victims of war, civil conflict, drought, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, crop failures and natural disasters. WFP distributes over 15 billion rations at an estimated average cost per ration of $0.31 every year. Also, the organisation offers school meals to over 16 million children in 60 countries every year, often in the areas that are the hardest to reach.
WFP receives most of its funding from governments, and it is funded entirely by voluntary donations. According to an article by Agence France-Presse, published in Hindustan Times, the organisation raised $8 billion in 2019 and the funds were used to provide 4.2 million metric tons of food and $2.1 billion of cash and vouchers.
Helping The World
During Ethiopia’s 1984 famine, WFP delivered 2 million tons of food. The organisation was also present in Sudan, Rwanda and in Kosovo. It also helped people during the 2004 tsunami and Haiti’s 2010 earthquake.
The organisation assisted 6.9 million people in 2019 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and also, helped fight the Ebola virus outbreak. WFP helped 4.5 million people in Syria and 300,000 acutely malnourished children in Nigeria. Recently, WFP is trying to feed 13 million people in Yemen each month.
At present, the pandemic has worsened the world hunger problem. During these uncertain times, WFP is providing life-saving food and cash safely, transporting aid workers and medical supplies, building treatment centres and monitoring as well as analysing data. The organisation’s logistics services utilised a network of hubs, passenger and cargo air links and medical evacuation services to enable a steady flow of cargo and workers to the frontlines to the coronavirus pandemic.
So, WFP has helped countless people throughout the years and it is still giving it all to save people from going hungry during this pandemic.
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