The United Nations World Food Programme has won this year's Nobel peace prize for its work in fighting hunger and its efforts to create conditions that can help bring peace to conflict areas, the Norwegian Nobel committee announced on Friday.
The Nobel Peace Prize 2020 was awarded to World Food Programme (WFP) 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," the committee stated.
Committee chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen said it chose WFP for the prestigious aware because it wanted to “turn the eyes of the world to the millions of people who suffer from or face the threat of hunger...a weapon of war and conflict”.
The COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic strengthened already strong reasons for giving the Nobel peace prize to WFP, among them the need for “multilateralism” at a time of global crisis, Reiss-Andersen stated.
Other front-runners for the 2020 prize included 17-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and poisoned Russian dissident and opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
A total 318 nominees were known to be under consideration for this year's award including 211 individuals and 107 organisations.
