The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is the recipient of the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize, and the Deputy Executive Director of the organisation, Amir Abdulla, told N1 that this represented a “recognition that hunger and conflict often go hand in hand and that what the world really needs to end hunger is also to bring peace.”

“But that recognition goes way beyond the World Food Program and its over 18,000 employees around the world – it means so much to the multilateral system, to primarily our UN partners who often work with us on these frontlines, but also the many NGO partners that we have,” he said.

Abdulla said that the WFP already expected 2020 to be a difficult year, even before the impact of the COVID-19.

“When you’ve got this intersection of conflict, climate and covid, it created a situation where today we have nearly 30 million on the brink of famine. So without some really urgent interventions, we will see potentially hundreds of thousands of people die from starvation, die from famine, which is something that the world has not seen for many many years,” he said.

More about the work of the WFP and on how the world should respond to world hunger, especially in light of the pandemic, can be seen in the full interview with Abdulla in the video above.