The World Food Program receives the Nobel Peace Prize with a call to avoid a "hunger pandemic"

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the World Food Program (WFP) for "preventing the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict" puts the focus once again on the darkness of malnutrition, now aggravated by the outbreak of the coronavirus.

“Due to so many wars, climate change, the use of hunger as a political and military weapon, and a global pandemic that exponentially worsens all of this, 270 million people are heading towards starvation.

If their needs are not addressed, there will be a hunger pandemic that will dwarf the impact of the covid ”, declared this Thursday the director of the WFP, David Beasley, after collecting the award from the Swedish academy in a lackluster delivery made virtually from Rome because of the coronavirus.

“This award is more than a thank you.

It is a call to action ”, Beasley remarked after showing the diploma and the medal awarded by the academy, which wanted to recognize WFP's contribution to“ improving the conditions of peace in the areas affected by violence ”, where the organization of the UN does two-thirds of its work.

Now the challenge is even more daunting.

The predicted estimate of 270 million people with food insecurity in its most acute phase is double that registered last year, which affected 135 million in 55 countries, according to the latest

Of these, 77 million were on the brink of starvation in 22 countries affected by the violence.

"Conflicts are the leading cause of hunger in the world," emphatically underlines this organization founded in 1961 that assists 100 million people in 88 countries and in 2019 reached donations that amounted to 6,600 million euros, although it registered a deficit of funding of 3,380.

The pandemic has opened up an even more complex scenario.

“The impact of the coronavirus has been brutal.

There have been no plantings, warehouses have been closed, there is hardly any transport, we have more movement restrictions, disembarkation in ports has been limited.

There is a combined effect between the increase in prices and the decrease in income.

And the most critical thing is the distribution of food among the vulnerable population, where it is necessary to maintain safe distances and comply with the protocols to avoid the disease, which can be definitive, ”explains Pablo Yuste, head of the chain of WFP supply in Nigeria, whose northeast is at risk of famine, such as various regions of Yemen, South Sudan and Burkina Faso, according to a recent early warning analysis of acute food insecurity hotspots.

The text includes that these countries add conflicts, socioeconomic shocks, collapse of markets and livelihoods, natural disasters and limitations for access to humanitarian assistance.

"We are very worried.

There are inaccessible areas where the perfect storm can hit.

Then it will be too late, because many people will have died ”, warns Luca Russo, food crisis analyst at FAO, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

Ravaged crops, blown up bridges, blocked roads, closed ports, destroyed markets, threats, water cuts, or travel to remote locations complicate the supply of products.

“There are areas in which the population goes up to a month without eating and that is an authentic eternity.

We try to set up escorts, to talk to the authorities.

But even drivers are afraid of attacks.

The logistics are very complex, ”adds Yuste from Nigeria, who sees the coronavirus as a“ tremendous accelerator ”of isolation and lack of access, even more complex among the displaced population.

"The priority is that the community can work its own assets, and that families buy from their neighbors and mobilize the economy, but it is complicated among the displaced population," adds Yuste, indicating that humanitarian aid is the last of the resources to turn to for supplies.

“Now in these cases it is not covid or hunger.

It is covid and hunger ”, illustrates the expert.

“The vulnerable population tends to move to places far from the focus of violence, where routes can be opened for the transport of products with distribution points as close as possible.

possible of those affected.

The local NGOs are

those who carry out the distribution, always in circumstances in which the safety of the staff is guaranteed ”, adds María Gallar, communication manager for WFP in Chad.

"International standards indicate that they cannot be more than five kilometers away on foot, and that it must be distributed during the day as a protection measure," he said in a telephone conversation.

It adds that the beneficiaries have ration cards and in certain missions they are identified with fingerprints or with iris scanners to ensure who is the person receiving the assistance.

International human right

They are strategies developed to also prevent humanitarian aid from becoming a punitive measure for the sides, as warned by conflict analyst Vicenç Fisas, author of the essay

.

"There may be distortions in food aid in the context of war, because governments, the opposition or armed groups can control it and punish the hungry," Fisas considers.

In these situations, Gallar details that they also use permanent studies and evaluations on which to base their interventions: "If we see interests, we have tools to justify or dissuade and guarantee the neutrality and impartiality of the work."

"Hunger can be the effect of a war, but also one of its causes," said WFP Deputy Director Amir Abdulla, recalling the UN resolution that indicates that hunger should never be used as a weapon in conflicts, that food resources cannot be attacked and that humanitarian corridors must be opened.

“There have always been wars, but more and more the victims are civilians.

When the laws of international humanitarian law are broken, be they armies or informal groups, it is necessary to sanction that no one is exempted from compliance.

Before, hunger was a result of war, but war can also be the result of hunger.

And we must act to prevent it ”, Yuste proposes as one of the solutions to eradicate the problem.

“Hunger in the 21st century should not exist.

There are resources to feed the entire planet.

Undernourishment, which in 2019 affected 690 million people in the world, is greater than the entire population with covid-19 (68.4 million), and yet we hardly talk about it and the reasons that originate it " Fisas concludes.