The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has been honoured with the Nobel peace prize for 2020. WFP executive director David Beasley joins Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney in assessing the threat presented by the global rise in hunger.

Will we face a hunger pandemic?

Today, the World Food Programme has been awarded the Nobel peace prize for 2020 for “its efforts to combat hunger, for its contributions to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-afflicted areas, and for acting as a driving force to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict”.

Ireland has been a generous and reliable donor to WFP for decades and is proud of playing its part in the WFP earning this Nobel prize, especially because of the exceptional priority Ireland accords to food security and nutrition in its aid policies.

Ending hunger is regrettably the UN sustainable development goal on which we have made the least progress

The Irish have been among the WFP staff who have helped people in need, often under trying and dangerous conditions. We think particularly of Mícheál Ryan, who died in 2019 while working for WFP in Africa.

Ending hunger is regrettably the UN sustainable development goal on which we have made the least progress. The WFP has highlighted the direct linkage between hunger and conflict. Six out of 10 of the world’s hungry live in countries at war – more than 400m people.

Other key drivers of hunger include chronic poverty; discrimination against women and minorities; environmental degradation and climate change; insufficient investment in agriculture; and food loss and waste.

Add COVID-19 to the global hunger equation and we could soon see another pandemic – a hunger pandemic as brutally relentless as the virus itself. COVID-19 has taken nearly 1.5m lives already.

Where food is available, each day more people lack the money to buy it

The COVID-19 pandemic has eaten into harvests, disrupted supply chains, and decimated the incomes of tens of millions of households. Where food is available, each day more people lack the money to buy it.

If we don’t act, the number of people starving worldwide will rise to 270m people next year – more than 50 times the population of Ireland.

We have little time to prevent a hunger pandemic. Ireland continues to do its share with its predictable and flexible multi-annual strategic partnership approach to supporting WFP, enabling WFP to programme funds where needs are greatest, ensuring an early and efficient response and maximising the impact of its support.

The way forward

What do we need to do? First, we must press all countries to honour the UN secretary general’s call for a global ceasefire.

Second, we must move quickly to provide cash and pre-position food in the most vulnerable regions.

Finally, we must focus on prevention and build resilience in societies so they can better withstand shocks like COVID-19

Third, we must take a more strategic approach to aid. The smart funding approach Ireland has followed through multi-year strategic partnership agreements with WFP allows early, timely and effective support in humanitarian crises.

Finally, we must focus on prevention and build resilience in societies so they can better withstand shocks like COVID-19.

We cannot let a generation of children in the developing world become collateral damage in this pandemic

And we have to start with the young. School closures during the pandemic have left 370m children without school meals and WFP is already providing food assistance to help strengthen nutrition and prevent disease among them. We cannot let a generation of children in the developing world become collateral damage in this pandemic.

Ireland will have a unique platform to advocate on these critical issues when we take a seat on the UN Security Council in January.

If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it has taught us empathy. Perhaps in the shared pain COVID-19 has thrust on us, we can finally come together and build a better world without hunger.