Sunhak Peace Prize

  △ Delhi, India, May 2020. Children from slums in India await a charity food distribution. Disasters accelerate inequality.  The adverse conditions facing the vulnerable are exacerbated by disasters, making it harder to overcome those conditions. This is the case for the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic had a significant impact worldwide, but its damage is more lethal to the poor. According to the 2020 UNDP report, the world is experiencing a decline in education, health, and living standards for the first time since 1990. All these declines began with the global epidemic of COVID-19 and are widely observed in all world regions. The economic contraction caused by the quarantine measures severely hit the lives of vulnerable groups such as residents of underdeveloped countries, low-income groups, women, and the disabled.   UN Secretary-General Antonius Guterchs criticized the reality of global inequality exacerbated by COVID-19:   "COVID-19 has been likened to an x-ray, revealing

  ㅡ 135.6 years. The time it takes to reach equality between men and women. ㅡ How big is the gap between the positions of men and women? According to the “Global Gender Gap Report 2021” report released by the World Economy Forum (WEF) in March, it will take 135.6 years to become a world where men and women are equal. The same report in 2019 predicted that it would take about 95 years if it had followed the same trend from then, but 36 more years were added to the current prediction due to the pandemic. In other words, the pandemic has delayed the progression of women obtaining their rights by a few decades.   The 'Global Gender Gap Report,’ released every year at the World Economic Forum, is a detailed analysis of gender gaps in politics, economy, education, and health in 156 countries worldwide, and is an important criterion for understanding the degree of gender inequality in each country.   ㅡ Greater gender inequality with pandemic ㅡ    Why did the pandemic have a

  Satisfying hunger through meals is an act of survival as well as a most basic and important human right. However, even in this day of abundance, approximately 9 percent of the world’s population of about 700 million people are suffering from hunger. That number is increasing by more than 10 million people every year. Why does this happen? ㅡ Food security means having access to sufficient food ㅡ Food self-sufficiency is decreasing worldwide . A major cause is that after the industrial revolution, industries moved from primary to secondary and tertiary industries, reducing agricultural area and labor worldwide. As a result, the food self-sufficiency rate has dropped dramatically in many countries as they started to depend on imported foods. The high dependence on foreign countries’ food export will be fatal if the exporting country decides not to export food.   As each country’s food self-sufficiency drops, f ood security can become a national security issue. Food security means, tha

  We live in a large village called the Earth. Thanks to the rapid development in transportation and communication, we can fly to the other side of the Earth in one day and hear news from all around the world in real-time. As countries worldwide influence each other in various areas including politics, economics, society, culture, and science, the world is becoming a single community. However, as interdependence increases across the globe, many problems arising from such globalization are deepening. Climate change, pandemics, refugee crises, and other global problems all require international cooperation. The need for legal and institutional regulations that apply beyond national boundaries is becoming urgent and solving these global problems require an expansion of our perspectives beyond national borders.     ㅡ In the age of globalization, we are already global citizens ㅡ We live in a globalized world and are impacted by the effects of globalization . Therefore, we are alr