Food powerful “weapon” for achieving reconciliation goals – WFP executive director

Beasley told Sputnik in an interview : “food is a powerful, a powerful weapon for reconciliation and I’ve told my friends in the U. S., that I want to see the UN use food as a weapon of peace, a weapon of reconciliation and every chance that I can to find opportunities to see countries that are at odds to work together.

“I will look for those opportunities, because the world is too fragile.”

The WFP official added that he would like the organization to be used for strengthening ties both between states and within nations.

Commenting on the role of the WFP in improvement of ties between Russia and Washington, he said that the UN programme could help take steps that would contribute to a thaw in their ties.

“We see that the UN is an opportunity for countries to come together and so we want the WFP to be a bridge of peace between nations, the U.S. and Russia,” Beasley said.

According to the WFP executive director, the humanitarian organization creates conditions for cooperation between any countries.

Speaking on the tensions between the U.S. Republican Party and the Democratic Party, Beasley said that the politicians from these two parties, who repeatedly clash on almost every issue, have agreed to cooperate in the fight against starvation and expressed hope that this experience could be used to overcome the differences in other areas.

“I met with the Republican and Democrat leaders and brought them together about hungry children around the world.

“It was amazing. It was like they laid aside their differences and they agreed to work together on helping hungry children of the world, and it made them feel good, and it helped in some other areas.

“You know, if they worked together here, then maybe they could work together there. It’s a start,” the WFP executive director said.

According to Beasley, the world is facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the UN and the problems have been created by the activities of people.

“”We’re facing the worst humanitarian crisis since the creation of the United Nations, since World War II.

“The number of hungry people in the world has gone up; the number of starving people has increased … I

“ spite of the fact that the population of the world had … gone up, 5.3 billion to 7.5 billion, the number of hungry people had gone down, but in the last couple of years the number of people hungry in the world has gone up,” the official said.

The executive director of the WFP added that armed conflicts, terrorism and other man-made crises had been behind the growth of people in need of food. (Sputnik/NAN)