Recently I received my copy of Furman Magazine by snail mail. As an alumnus, my first inclination upon receiving the magazine is to go to the class notes section to check on my classmates, but along the way, thumbing through the magazine, I came across a full-page photo of a class of 1993 student, former Prime Minister of Finland, Alexander Stubb. His warm smile was compelling. Class news seemed less urgent.
What Stubb has already accomplished in his lifetime is remarkable. He speaks five languages, collaborated with his major professor at Furman on a book they have seen through four editions, was a member of the European Parliament, and at the center of Finnish politics.
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He now serves as the director of the school of Transitional Governance at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. He is a sought-after commentator on the war in Ukraine. In the first four months of the war, he gave more than 400 interviews.
‘Nourishing Peace’ on United Nations Day
But what caught my attention in the article was his assessment of politics. Stubb says international political work boils down to war and peace, “the big stuff.” “National politics, it gets a bit nastier,” he says. “The worst thing would have been local politics – that’s just murder.”
While his comment on local politics feels painfully relevant in this election cycle, what caught my heart was his comment about “the big stuff.”
Oct. 24 on my Farmer’s Almanac calendar reads “United Nations Day.”
It marks the anniversary of the day in 1945 when the United Nations Charter entered into force, incorporating the values of peace, justice, respect, human rights, tolerance, and solidarity. With 193 member states today, there is the possibility of finding solutions to our biggest problems together.
United Nations Day is an opportunity for us to remember the ending of World War II and amplify our common agenda as a world community.
The United Nations is uniquely equipped to deal with the major issues we face on a global level and selects as a theme each year a major issue on which we can focus our energies. This year that theme is “Nourishing Peace” and aims to address how food security and peace are intertwined on the international scale.
Working for peace amid hunger, poverty, war
A friend who is far more knowledgeable than me about global issues warned, just after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia this past February, about the ramifications for starvation in Africa without Ukrainian grain.
While awareness of such a seemingly remote connection felt remarkable to me at the time, I have since heard experts talk about the ways in which the war in Ukraine impacts the global efforts to reduce hunger, as Ukraine is one of the world’s most productive grain-growing regions. After steadily declining for over a decade, rather than making gains on the United Nations sustainable goal of eliminating hunger by 2030, we have lost ground in the past few years.
The 2022 edition of “The United Nations State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World Report” notes that as many as 828 million people were affected by hunger in 2021. That is 46 million people more from a year earlier and 150 million more from 2019.
Climate change, COVID-19, increasing conflict in the world, and rising inflation have all played a role in the increased number of hungry people. These factors were exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which has disrupted the supply of staple cereals, oilseeds, and fertilizer from both nations, as well as upset international supply chains.
Ending hunger and extreme food insecurity is hampered by conflict and wars. But the inverse is also true. Poverty and hunger can precipitate violent conflict. United Nations Day this year encourages that we work for the basic human right for food as we work for peace.
Taking efforts to local level
While global problems are by nature large and can feel unsurmountable, what if we determined to minimize food waste in our daily lives?
Personal awareness of the food we consume, what we throw away, and how we can be more intentional about eating leftovers or sharing our excess food rather than discarding it, may be a first step in being more responsible about a commodity that is scarce to so many in the world.
Perhaps that personal awareness will lead us to take other steps in supporting organizations that share food with the hungry or in praying and working diligently for sustainable solutions to hunger.
I was moved to see a volunteer watering a community garden at a local church this past week, providing food for their neighbors. I am grateful to know that Second Harvest of the Big Bend distributes over 10 million meals annually to persons that otherwise would go hungry.
I pray that those of us who have enough to eat can become passionate about lobbying for and supporting those who do not, which I pray will create within us and among us, peace.
The United Nations is the product of hope, the hope and resolve following World War II to move beyond global conflict to global cooperation. While we are certainly in perilous times now, it is difficult to imagine a more fragile time than when the organization was founded.
Current United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, reminds us that by acting as one, we can nurture fragile shoots of hope. “So,” he says, “Let’s develop common solutions to common problems, grounded in goodwill, trust, and the rights shared by every human being.”
In ways, “the big stuff” that Furman graduate, Alexander Stubb, referenced regarding international political work, comes back to the most basic of human needs, the essential hunger of our bodies for food, and of our souls for peace. As we recognize United Nations Day this year, I pray we can find ways to nourish peace.
The Rev. Candace McKibben is an ordained minister and pastor of Tallahassee Fellowship.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: United Nations Day is a good time to ‘nourish peace’ at home
