Helsinki, Oct 16: Martti Ahtisaari, the former president of Finland and global peace broker who was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008 for his work to resolve international conflicts, died on
Monday. He was 86.
The foundation he created for preventing and resolving violent conflicts said in a statement it was
“deeply saddened by the loss of its founder and (former) chair of the board.”
In 2021, it was announced that Ahtisaari had advanced Alzheimer’s disease.
“It is with great sadness that we have received the news of the death of President Martti Ahtisaari,”
Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said in a statement. “He was president in times of change, who
piloted Finland into a global EU era.”
Niinisto described Ahtisaari in a televised speech as “a citizen of the world, a great Finn. A teacher,
diplomat and head of state. A peace negotiator and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.” Regular
programming on Finnish public broadcaster YLE was interrupted for Niinisto’s speech.
Ahtisaari helped reach peace accords related to Serbia’s withdrawal from Kosovo in the late 1990s,
Namibia’s bid for independence in the 1980s, and autonomy for Aceh province in Indonesia in 2005.
He was also involved with the Northern Ireland peace process in the late 1990s, being tasked with
monitoring the IRA’s disarmament process.
“President Ahtisaari committed all his life to peace, diplomacy, the goodness of humanity, and had
an extraordinary influence on our present and the future,” said Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani. “He
engraved the frame of our country, and his name will remain forever in the pages of the Republic of
Kosovo’s history.”
When the Norwegian Nobel Peace Committee picked Ahtisaari in October 2008, it cited him ‘for his
important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international
conflicts’.
Ahtisaari was the Nordic country’s president for one six-year term — from 1994 until 2000 — and
later founded the Helsinki-based Crisis Management Initiative, aimed at preventing and resolving
violent conflicts through informal dialogue and mediation.
Born June 23, 1937, in the eastern town of Viipuri, which is now in Russia, Ahtisaari was a primary
school teacher before joining Finland’s Foreign Ministry in 1965. He spent about 20 years abroad,
first as ambassador to Tanzania, Sambia and Somalia and then to the United Nations in New York.
After that he joined the UN, working at its New York headquarters, before heading the UN operation
that brought independence to Namibia in 1990. Ahtisaari had become deeply involved in activities
aimed at preparing Namibians for independence during his diplomatic tenure in Africa in the 1970s.
He was appointed as the special representative of Namibia by then-UN Secretary-General Kurt
Waldheim in 1978, and is widely credited with leading the African nation to independence under his
mandate as head of UN peacekeeping forces there in the late 1980s.
The Namibian government was grateful for Ahtisaari’s work and later made him an honorary citizen
of the country.
After returning to Finland in 1991, Ahtisaari worked as a Foreign Ministry secretary of state before
being elected president in 1994. He was the first Finnish head of state to be elected directly instead
of through an electoral college.
Having lived abroad for so long, he came into the race as a political outsider and was seen as
bringing a breath of fresh air to Finnish politics. Ahtisaari was a strong supporter of the European
Union and NATO, which Finland joined in 1995 and 2023 respectively.
His international highlight came in 1999 when he negotiated — alongside Russia’s Balkans envoy
Viktor Chernomyrdin — the end to fighting in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Ahtisaari also hosted
Russian President Boris Yeltsin and US President Bill Clinton at a US-Russia summit in the Finnish
capital, Helsinki, in March 1997.
Ahtisaari “had a great heart and he believed in the human being,” Niinisto said.
“In his speech at the Nobel celebration, Ahtisaari said that all conflicts can be resolved: “Wars and
conflicts are not inevitable. They are caused by humans,” Niinisto said. “There are always interests
that war promotes. Therefore, those who have power and influence can also stop them.”
As president, Ahtisaari travelled abroad more widely than any of his predecessors. At home, he often
appeared impatient and vexed by media criticism — he was clearly much more comfortable in
international circles.
He declined to run for a second term in the January 2000 presidential election, saying he wanted to
devote the time he would otherwise have used for campaigning to run the rotating EU presidency,
which Finland held for the first time in 1999.
After the Finnish presidency, he was offered several international positions, including in the United
Nations refugee agency, but decided instead to open his own office in Helsinki which centred on
mediating in international crises.
In May 2017, Ahtisaari stepped down as chairman of the Crisis Management Initiative to help resolve
global conflicts but said he would continue working with the organization as an adviser. He was
replaced by former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb, who is now running for president.
Ahtisaari is survived by his wife Eeva and their adult son.
CMI said Ahtisaari will be laid to rest following a state funeral. The date will be announced later. (AP)
