The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to the World Food Program (WFP) for its efforts to combat hunger and improve conditions for peace in conflict areas, the Nobel Committee said.
The WFP was honored 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," it said.
The Rome-based organization says it helps some 97 million people in about 88 countries each year and that one in nine people worldwide still do not have enough to eat.
"The need for international solidarity and multilateral cooperation is more conspicuous than ever," Chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen of the Norwegian Nobel Committee told a news conference.
The WFP is deeply honored by its Nobel Peace Prize win, a spokesman said, describing it as "a proud moment".
"This is humbling," Tomson Phiri told reporters during a regular briefing in Geneva, adding it was "really a proud moment" for the UN organization.
"One of the beauties of WFP activities is that not only do we provide food for today and tomorrow, but we also are equipping people with the knowledge, the means to sustain themselves for the next day and the days after."
The prize is worth ten million Swedish crowns, or around $1.1 million, and will be presented in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel’s death. This year’s ceremony will be scaled down due to the pandemic.
On Monday, the Nobel Committee awarded the prize for physiology and medicine for discovering the liver-ravaging hepatitis C virus. Tuesday’s prize for physics honored breakthroughs in understanding the mysteries of cosmic black holes, and the chemistry prize on Wednesday went to scientists behind a powerful gene-editing tool. The literature prize was awarded to American poet Louise Glück on Thursday for her “candid and uncompromising” work.
Still to come next week is the prize for outstanding work in the field of economics.
