New Delhi: The World Food Programme (WFP), a United Nations body, has been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for Peace while American poet Louise Gluck will get this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature.
It was announced on Friday that the WFP has been selected for the prestigious award for feeding millions of people from Yemen to North Korea with the coronavirus pandemic pushing millions more into hunger.
The WFP is the world’s largest humanitarian organization addressing hunger and promoting food security. “It 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,” said Nobel Committee Chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen in Oslo.
Whether delivering food by helicopter or on the back of an elephant or a camel, the WFP prides itself on being “the leading humanitarian organization” in a world where, by its own estimates, some 690 million people—one in 11—go to bed on empty stomach.”
“With this year’s award, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to turn the eyes of the world towards the millions of people who suffer from or face the threat of hunger,” Reiss-Andersen said.
On Thursday, the Committee had announced the name of American poet Louise Gluck as the winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature.
She is a professor of English at Yale University.
Gluck made her debut in 1968 with a collection of poems called ‘Firstborn’. She has since then published 12 collections and some volumes of essays on poetry.
(VP)
