One hundred and forty million men, women, and children. That’s the number of people the World Food Programme fed in 2022. Fifty million more people than in 2017, when David Beasley took over as Executive Director.
David, no one could have anticipated the unprecedented scale of hunger the world would experience during your tenure – fueled by a combination of COVID-19, the climate crisis, and conflicts… especially Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine.
And yet, under your leadership, WFP repeatedly rose to the challenge… even earning a Nobel Peace Prize for its work.
You used your platform to shine a bright and unrelenting spotlight on the human suffering that you’d seen up close, and told the international community: “The hungry people of the world are counting on us to do the right thing – and we must not let them down.”
David, thank you for dedicating every day of your remarkable service at WFP to doing the right thing for the world’s hungry people, and pressing all of us to do the same.