WFP chief won’t pick up Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo due to pandemic

The head of the World Food Programme David Beasley will not
travel to Oslo in December to pick up the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize due to the
coronavirus pandemic, the Norwegian Nobel Institute said Wednesday.

“We are now considering the possibility of holding a
digital award ceremony where the WFP will be presented with the medal and
diploma,” the institute said, adding that the traditional Nobel lecture
and banquet had been postponed until next year.

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“With the current restrictions in Oslo, it would not be
possible to carry out the ceremony or other parts of the laureate’s traditional
programme in a good and worthy manner.”

The award ceremony, lecture and banquet are traditionally
held in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death of prize founder
Alfred Nobel.

A separate ceremony is usually held on the same day in
Stockholm for the other Nobel prizes in the fields of medicine, physics,
chemistry, literature and economics.

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But the Nobel Foundation announced in September that the ceremony had been cancelled for the first time since 1944 — then because of
World War II — in favour of a televised event showing the laureates receiving
their medals and diplomas in their home countries.

The WFP, founded in 1961, was honoured with the Peace Prize
for its efforts “to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and
conflict”, Nobel committee chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen said when she
announced the winner on October 9.