Former Executive Director of World Food Programme, David Beasley, to speak at ICN Congress in Montreal

The International Council of Nurses (ICN) and the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA) are delighted to announce that David Beasley, Former Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) will address the ICN Congress in Montreal, 1-5 July 2023.

Register now to hear David Beasley and other top speakers!

Mr Beasley will highlight the pressing global challenges of hunger and starvation, while emphasising the crucial role we all play in being part of the solution. His presentation will be part of a plenary session entitled ‘Building a better future today’ which aims to promote the importance of collaboration and partnership in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Other speakers in this session include Mickey Chopra, the Global Solutions Lead for Service Delivery in the Health Nutrition and Population Global Practice of the World Bank, and Anurita Bains, UNICEF Associate Director, HIV/AIDS. Their combined expertise and perspectives will provide a comprehensive understanding of the collaborative efforts required to achieve the SDGs.

David Beasley served as Executive Director of the World Food Programme from April 2017 to April 2023. While the term of the director of the WFP is five years, Beasley's term was extended by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres due to the current food crisis of the Russo-Ukrainian War and the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, Beasley accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the WFP for its efforts to combat world hunger. In 2003, he received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, a private award created by the Kennedy family to recognise displays of courage, for his controversial request to the South Carolina legislature to remove the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse dome. Since 2019, he has been a member of the World Economic Forum High-level Group on Humanitarian Investing. Prior to this, he served as Governor of South Carolina from 1995 to 1999. The current WFP Executive Director is Cindy McCain, a distinguished humanitarian, business leader and diplomat who spoke at the ICN Congress in Singapore in 2019.

ICN’s Congresses are the largest international gatherings of nurses across the world. ICN 2023 promises to be one of the most impactful ICN Congresses yet. The theme of the Congress is Nurses together: a force for global health and it will also look closely at key topics such as nursing leadership; emergency and disaster management; nursing regulation and education; improving the quality and safety of healthcare delivery; advancing nursing practice; growing and sustaining the nursing workforce; promoting and enabling healthier communities; and addressing global health priorities and strengthening health systems.

A full list of confirmed Congress speakers can be found here, and the programme is available here.

To register, go to https://icncongress2023.org/register/

Download the press release here