Dear Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure for me to welcome all of you who have come to this Award Ceremony to congratulate and encourage the laureates of the Sunhak Peace Prize for 2019. In particular, the presence of distinguished leaders and representatives from around the world, including current and former heads of state and special guests from Africa, brings great value to this program.

First of all, I would like to express my sincere admiration to the two laureates of the 2019 Sunhak Peace Prize. I congratulate them for their tremendous achievements in devoting their lives for a world of peace for all humanity.

To honor the legacy of the late Reverend Dr. Sun Myung Moon, Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon established the Sunhak Peace Prize as an extension of his work for peace. Reverend and Mrs. Moon have dedicated their lives to building a global community based on their vision of “One Family Under God,” which emphasizes interdependence, mutual prosperity and universal values. Especially after Reverend Moon’s ascension in 2012, Mrs. Moon has been expanding this work with the purpose of creating a peaceful future of Africa.

Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

The 2019 Sunhak Peace Prize has as its theme “Peace and Human Development in Africa.” When we reflect upon peace and human development, putting down the weapons of war is only one step toward building world peace. Peace can be achieved only when everyone’s human rights are protected and respected.

The two winners of the Sunhak Peace Prize, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina and Ms. Waris Dirie, have devoted their lives to protecting the world’s most vulnerable people.

Dr. Akinwumi Adesina has promoted a vision of good governance for African nations. He has implemented innovative agricultural policies all across Africa, dedicated to a future filled with hope.

Waris Dirie has improved the rights of millions of girls and women by leading a campaign to eradicate tragic act of female genital mutilation.

By observing the paths of dedication and devotion shown in the lives of this year’s laureates, we can see how courage and leadership can steer the world’s communities one step closer to peace and prosperity.

When we reflect on where we are standing at this moment, we understand that we are already heading toward the middle of the 21st century. Therefore, I want to encourage everyone to constantly consider practices that will work for the betterment of our future. Such conscientious introspection will bring about good deeds, which will build up one by one and open a new chapter of world peace, a prologue to a new history.

The Sunhak Peace Prize will continuously seek out brave men and women who love humanity and work to build world peace based upon the vision of “One Family Under God” and “Making the World Better for Future Generations.”

Finally, I want to express my sincere appreciation to all the distinguished guests.
I send you my best wishes and ask that peace live in your families.
Thank you.

I extend my heartfelt congratulations to Ms. Waris Dirie for her truly remarkable leadership on behalf of the human rights of young girls and Dr. Adesina for his great work in developing Africa into a land of prosperity and promoting good governance in Africa and their selection as 2019 Sunhak Prize recipients. These two Laureates truly will bring a distinct focus on uplifting human rights and human development in Africa and thereby advance the Sunhak Peace Agenda for the future.

As the second decade of the 21st Century draws to a close, it is clear that the single greatest challenge that the human species has ever confronted is this: can we nutritiously and sustainably feed the 9 to 10 billion people who will be on Earth by the year 2050, especially given the increasingly adverse impact of climate volatility? A second inextricably linked existential issue is whether global peace and stability, so integral to meeting that overriding global food security goal, can be maintained.

Essential to fulfilling both of these challenges is whether the human dignity of all, particularly the poorest and most malnourished, among them the women and children, can be preserved and elevated.

In my capacity as President of the World Food Prize, I have traveled over 12,000 miles from our headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa in the American heartland, to be here to proclaim that, given these overriding global challenges, there could be no more fitting choice than the selection of Dr. Akinwumi Ayodeji Adesina, son of Nigeria, the 2017 World Food Prize Laureate and President of the African Development Bank, to be the 2019 Sunhak Peace Prize Laureate.

On behalf of our World Food Prize Council of Advisors, I commend Dr. Il Sik Hong and the Sunhak Peace Prize Committee for its selection of Dr. Adesina for this extraordinary high honor and this extraordinarily well-deserved global recognition. More than any other individual, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina embodies the personal attributes, substantive knowledge and a several decade long array of impressive achievements that have already uplifted the lives of millions of people in his native Nigeria and indeed across the African continent. Through this exceptional leadership, President Adesina has demonstrated the path that must be followed if the world is to remain at peace and meet and overcome the unprecedented humanitarian and ecological challenges we face.

The selection of Dr. Adesina, our 2017 World Food Prize Laureate, for this extraordinary honor as a Sunhak Laureate not only recognizes his multiple and diverse achievements, but also provides a 50 year-long historic linkage to the first con-joining of the issues of peace and confronting hunger through agricultural advances. In 1970, Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, a native of my home state of Iowa, received the Nobel Peace Prize for developing miracle wheat, which saved millions and millions across South Asia from famine starvation and death. Dr. Borlaug, lauded as the Father of the Green Revolution, founded the World Food Prize in 1986 to inspire those breakthrough achievements that would be needed to eradicate hunger and malnutrition as the world population inexorably expanded.

That same year, Dr. Borlaug became a personal mentor to a young economist from Nigeria who had just graduated from Purdue University with a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics and was starting a position at the Rockefeller Foundation. For the next several decades, with Borlaug ‘s encouragement, Akinwumi Adesina, supported by his wonderful wife Grace, embarked on his odyssey to transform Africa, as an agricultural scientist at the Rockefeller Foundation, just as Borlaug had spread the Green Revolution through Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

Ladies and gentlemen, the challenge of feeding 9 to 10 billion people will ultimately be decided in those areas with between one and two billion people: in China, in India, in Latin America centered around Brazil, and in Africa. Success will be determined by investment in science and research, enhanced nutrition, expanded rural infrastructure especially roads and policies that unleash innovation and increase crop yields, all designed to uplift small holder farmers. Above all, peace will be a critical element of success.

Of all the regions, Africa with its broad array of geographic sub-divisions and multiple political leaders, offers the most difficult challenge of harmonizing all these diverse factors. It will be there in Africa that the greatest challenge in all human history will ultimately be decided. Can a peaceful Africa feed itself?

Last November sitting in the audience of over 1,000 potential investors at the African Investment Conference he organized, I listened as President Akinwumi Adesina mesmerized the attendees, imbuing them with the sense of “Yes, Africa Can.”

There engulfed by the legacy of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Nelson Mandela, the man who transformed South African agriculture and brought peace to that country, to guide him, my friend Akin Adesina was extolling the vision of how all of African agriculture can be transformed by Africans themselves and thereby bring peace to the continent. It filled me and everyone who was standing to cheer him with hope and optimism about Africa’s future.

As a World Food Prize Laureate and now a Sunhak Peace Laureate, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina has an even higher platform from which to confront this ultimate challenge and bring Africa a Green Revolution. I know that Dr. Norman Borlaug is looking down this day with a large smile on his face for all you have done, my friend, and for all you will continue to do.

Congratulations!

Dear Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am honored to give congratulatory remarks on this stage of the prestigious Sunhak Peace Prize. The Award Theme of the 2019 Sunhak Peace Prize, “Human Rights and Human Development in Africa,” really touches my heart sincerely, because I am a citizen of the 21st century and because I am an African.

A prize cannot be awarded to everyone. A prize is something that is awarded to an individual with great devotion and one who has God-given ability. Therefore, I would like to send great applause and appreciation to the Laureates of the 2019 Sunhak Peace Prize, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina and Ms. Waris Dirie, who have devoted their lives to building better world for all.

Waris Dirie is a human rights activist who has been fighting endlessly to eradicate female genital mutilation around the world. Especially, she has contributed greatly to raising worldwide awareness of the female genital mutilation issue, after she was appointed as the UN special ambassador for the elimination of female genital mutilation in 1997.

After she published a book called Desert Flower, the book became best-selling book around the world, and it was adapted into a movie. The movie helped to spread the tragic facts about female genital mutilation and helped people to change their perspectives about female genital mutilation.

For over thousands of years, the cruel act has been practiced in many countries. And fighting against this deep-rooted tradition was surely an unimaginably painful path to take with many threats against Waris Dirie.

However, Waris Dirie devoted her life to improve lives of girls and women, at the risk of her life. In the end, she has improved millions of girls and women’s human rights by saving many of them from female genital mutilation. Now, the number of victims of female genital mutilation is decreasing greatly, through her tireless efforts.

The two nominees of the Sunhak Peace Prize for 2019 are the great man and woman of this century, who have taken the path which no one else has chosen to take, for the happiness of humanity and for the betterment of our future. And they have endured hardships and have been making tremendous achievements through their tireless efforts. They emphasize the value of loving humanity to pave a bright future for everyone.

Again, I would like to give sincere congratulations to Dr. Akinwumi Adesina and Ms. Waris Dirie.

Lastly I would like to send sincere thanks and congratulations to the Sunhak Peace Prize Foundation on awarding individuals and organizations with a futuristic perspective in gathering hopes and lights to build a bright future for humanity. I think awarding of a prize is the greatest and glorious way to uplift the humanistic spirit. Also, it’s not only the reward given to the nominee but it’s an opportunity for everyone to celebrate, congratulate and learn the nominees’ marvelous achievements in building a world of peace.