Nobel Peace Prize 2020 awarded to World Food Programme

The World Food Programme has won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

The organisation won the prize "for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict."

The announcement was made in Oslo by Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Nobel Committee.

The Nobel Committee said that the coronavirus pandemic has added to the hunger faced by millions of people around the world and called on governments to ensure that WFP and other aid organisations receive the financial support necessary to feed them.

There was no shortage of causes or candidates on this year's list, with 211 individuals and 107 organisations nominated ahead of the Feb. 1 deadline.

However, the Norwegian Nobel Committee maintains absolute secrecy about whom it favours for arguably the world's most prestigious prize.

The award comes with a 10-milion krona ($1.1 million) cash prize and a gold medal to be handed out at a ceremony in Oslo, Norway, on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death. This year's ceremony will be scaled down due to the pandemic.

On Monday, the Nobel Committee awarded the prize for physiology and medicine for discovering the liver-ravaging hepatitis C virus. Tuesday's prize for physics honoured breakthroughs in understanding the mysteries of cosmic black holes, and the chemistry prize on Wednesday went to scientists behind a powerful gene-editing tool. The literature prize was awarded to American poet Louise Gluck on Thursday for her "candid and uncompromising" work.

Still to come next week is the prize for outstanding work in the field of economics.

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