Nobel Peace Prize 2020

WHEN DAVID AUSTIN graduated from UP’s newly minted MBA in Nonprofit Management program in 2013, he earned the Moreau Fellows Award for Outstanding Service and Leadership for his work with Mercy Corps. Turns out, that was just a hint of much—much—bigger things to come.

This year, Austin and the rest of his team at the United Nations World Food Programme were awarded the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to combat hunger and prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war.

“Access to food is a human right according to the UN charter, so if people don’t have access to food, we try to get it to them,” says Austin, director of strategic partnerships. “We’re currently feeding about 114 million people a day in 84 countries.” And due to COVID-19, the number of hungry people nearly doubled in the past year.

Also, thanks to the WFP’s efforts, the UN Security Council passed a resolution last year directly linking food security to peace and international security. “We were able to show with data that global security is directly tied to food security,” says Austin. “Hunger is a driver of conflict globally. That’s why two-thirds of our budget right now—which is about 8 billion dollars this year—is going to conflict zones.”

Of course, 2020 was the year of pivots. As the transportation world shut down, the WFP used its extensive global supply chain to deliver a lot more than food, including 145,500 cubic meters of PPE to 173 countries, and served as the humanitarian air bridge for nonprofit relief workers around the world.

“We were the last resort, and we stepped up,” Austin says