POINT OF VIEW. “The Nobel Peace World Food Program: Excellent news!”

« The new Nobel Peace Prize 2,020 is totally indisputable, and I applaud this very wise choice with both hands!

Some might find that giving a 12th Nobel Prize to a United Nations body (1) is a little pointless; I absolutely do not share this opinion, especially in this period when multilateralism has a bad press. Coming together to fight hunger and save lives is still a great project, and even more useful than before!

Indeed, since the 1950s, peace has nevertheless made great progress on earth. Of course, if you watch and listen to the audiovisual media, you can often have the impression that the planet is on fire. This is absolutely not true.

On average, social and political violence and war would have caused 5 to 10% of deaths worldwide in the 20th century (2), but less than 0.9% at the start of the 21st century. There are hardly any “real” wars in Asia, America and Europe; they only exist in the Middle East in sub-Saharan Africa. Far too many, of course, but much less than before, and relatively less deadly (3). It is an indisputable progress of humanity.

A child dies of hunger every 6 minutes

But, at the same time, the number of people who are hungry – that is, who do not have enough daily calories to live with dignity – has remained remarkably stable for over a century, around of 800 million, in 1900, in 1950, in 2000, and in 2020, with consequences still as dramatic! And among these undernourished people a variable part is literally in danger of death; this figure, around 130 million, is about to double because of the consequences of the Covid crisis.

Result: on Earth currently we die a lot, a lot more from hunger (from malnutrition, lack of drinking water or from untreated diseases) than from wars, even if the two are obviously very linked: we are hungry therefore we are war, then we go to war, so we’re hungry! To our shame, it is estimated that every year nearly 3 million children die of hunger, one every 6 minutes.

WFP saves most lives on earth

Seen like this, we can estimate that, quite possibly, the organization which saves the most human lives on earth is the World Food Program! It feeds nearly 100 million people in 88 countries every year. Of course, technically it does not create peace, but it takes care of the rush and makes sure that people are still alive when peace finally arrives. With its 17,000 employees, and its 5,600 trucks, 20 boats and 90 planes chartered daily, it is in particular more than a million women and young children that it feeds each month, particularly in countries at war or subjected to natural disasters, not to mention its school canteens for 17 million very poor children.

To give other orders of magnitude, its budget of 8 billion per year is still very insufficient, but it can also be compared to that of organizations such as Action Against Hunger, which has “only” 260 million, or Oxfam 1 billion… or the United Nations Organization for Food and Agriculture, which also has only 1 billion. In fact, in this strange world, only the Gates Foundation stands in the same backyard with its budget of 5 billion!

Fighting hunger is advancing peace

But we must realize that, if hunger was previously a kind of fatality, when we were not good at agriculture or international transport, it is now primarily political, 100% a construction of man. . You can die of hunger in a country that abounds in food and exports it to the whole world. Conversely, we can eat everywhere, even in overcrowded or semi-desert areas. In practice, the victims of hunger are almost all victims of the greed or indifference of some of their contemporaries or of ignorance, of war, of the absence of a State, of conflicts to monopolize them. natural resources. And, henceforth, it is also a by-product of globalization and the absence of public control of multinationals. “We” have indeed carried out (without saying it, by action or by omission) sophisticated policies to spread hunger (4).

If this Nobel Prize could help make hunger as old-fashioned and culturally outdated as war, and encourage governments and citizens to re-engage in this just cause, it would be real progress for world peace. Especially at a time when the dramatic consequences of the COVID crisis are being felt among the most disadvantaged populations, who are losing their meager means of subsistence and are threatened to go from “simple” malnutrition to hunger, even famine almost everywhere in the world… “

(1) In 60 years, the United Nations, its specialized agencies and its officials have already received eleven Nobel Peace Prizes, including two for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees alone, and two for Secretaries generals, Dag Hammarskjöld and Kofi Annan.

(2) An estimated 5.4 billion people died in the 20th century, including 177 million from murder, 142 million from political repression and 130 million from wars, or 8%. Currently, around 400,000 people die from homicides each year, plus 100,000 from wars and terrorism, out of a total of 57 million, or 0.9%. 526,000 people die each year from violent deaths, including 396,000 from intentional homicide and “only” 55,000 from conflict, out of a total of 62 million deaths.

(3) The current worst war, that of Syria, is at 400,000 dead, which is roughly the number of deaths in Algeria’s war of independence … and much less than those of Biafra, Rwanda, Vietnam, Cambodia, Congo, Russian repression, etc. Not to mention the world wars.

(4) Extracts from my book “Zero hunger, ending hunger in the world”, Editions La Découverte.

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