Dan Glickman, Liz Schrayer: Funding World Food Program for COVID is good US diplomacy

A Nobel Peace Prize is pretty darn impressive. Think Mother Teresa, Malala Yousafzay, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. They and 98 other award recipients since 1901 have served at the forefront of tackling the big challenges and making the world a safer and better place.

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and the havoc it has unleashed across the world in 2020, the United Nations’ World Food Program was deemed worthy of this distinction not only for its effort to combat hunger, but perhaps even more significantly for acting as a “driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.”

In a phone call with the Nobel team following the award, the program’s executive director, David Beasley, described himself as speechless. “God knows, the people of the World Food Program deserve this. Holy mackerel, first time in my life I’ve been without words.” Thankfully for the world, the former governor of South Carolina wasn’t so speechless in his warning at the outset of the pandemic that we “could be facing multiple famines of biblical proportions” if access, funding shortfalls and supply chain disruptions went unaddressed in the COVID-19 response efforts ahead.

As the world celebrates its great heroes at the World Food Program and simultaneously confronts a pandemic, it shines a spotlight on three undeniable facts:

▪ Humanitarian aid is effective. The numbers speak for themselves: In 2019, the World Food Program reached more than 97 million people in 88 countries. Around the world, it is the largest humanitarian organization, and also the world’s largest provider of school meals. The agency achieves this level of lifesaving impact with a global logistics operation that includes close to 5,600 trucks and more than 90 aircraft in motion on any given day.

But the mission of getting food to some of the toughest places on earth has only intensified this year. Before the pandemic’s onset, the U.N. estimated nearly 10% of the world’s population was undernourished, an issue complicated by massive challenges such as locusts, natural disasters and economic crises. Enter COVID-19, and the program’s team has been laser-focused on rallying the resources of the world, with projections that the economic impact of the virus on vulnerable families could become more deadly than the virus itself.

▪ Fighting hunger is diplomacy at its best. If the highest aim of diplomacy is to prevent war and pursue peace, then the World Food Program may just be the world’s best non-traditional diplomat. Too often, hunger has emerged as a root cause of political instability and conflict, while food has long been used as a weapon of war.

A fed population is much less likely to be exploited by extremist groups. Last year in Yemen, the program estimates it was able to feed 14.1 million of the 20 million hungry people throughout the country. All told, it estimates more than two-thirds of its resources were directed to conflict zones last year, where people are three times more likely to be undernourished.

▪ The World Food Program story is also a story of American aid at its best. Through a combination of local and international food assistance programs, the commitment of American farmers and more than 17,000 staff members, the World Food Program has mobilized action on a scale like no other in partnership with more than 1,000 non-governmental organizations, American companies, international agencies and academics working hand in hand.

The same day the Nobel award was announced, Minnesota-based Cargill, Inc. pledged a $1 million match to the World Food Program. Why? Because no one should have to go to bed hungry, and because global food security is in our nation’s security and economic interests.

American leadership has been critical to its success since President Dwight D. Eisenhower first pitched the creation of the World Food Program in 1961. With U.S. contributions representing more than 40% of worldwide funding in 2019, the program has leveraged our country’s proud stewardship of this mission with contributions of 87 other donors to feed millions of hungry people last year alone. That’s not surprising, as combating hunger is one issue that shares strong bipartisan support in Washington.

With the pandemic looming, the Nobel award is a siren call that the world must do far more to save lives. As the second- and third-order impacts on poverty, hunger and illness come to light, Bill and Melinda Gates’ annual Goalkeepers report reminds us why it’s so important that America partners to help rally the world: “No single country will be able to meet this challenge alone.”

The truth is you can’t stop a global health crisis without a global response. That is why bipartisan calls for emergency resources should be heeded. Congressional allocation of resources for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development — alongside global players such as the World Food Program, UNICEF, the Global Fund, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and others — would directly support the recovery and protection of the health and economic security of the American people.

In the aftermath of this incredible award, Beasley quickly took the spotlight off the honor and shone it on the seriousness of the global challenges we face. We should, too.

Liz Schrayer is the president and CEO of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition. She coauthored this with former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, cochair of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition and the board of World Food Program-USA.

This story was originally published November 12, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Dan Glickman, Liz Schrayer: Funding World Food Program for COVID is good US diplomacy."