Martti Ahtisaari: Former Finland President And Global Peace Broker Dies

Martti Ahtisaari, the former president of Finland and a global peace broker has died at the age of 86.

During his life, Ahtisaari was, as mentioned, a president of Finland, a diplomat, a teacher and a global peace broker who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008 for his work to resolve international conflicts.

Ahtisaari was Finland’s president for one term from 1994 to 2000 and in 2021 it was announced that Ahtisaari had advanced Alzheimer’s disease.

Martti Ahtisaari: A force for peace

Among his achievements, Ahtisaari helped strike peace deals related to Serbia’s withdrawal from Kosovo in the late 1990s and Namibia’s bid for independence in the 1980s.

He was also involved with the Northern Ireland peace process in the late 1990s, tasked with monitoring the disarmament process of the IRA.

The current Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said that Ahtisaari was “a Finn with a big heart.”

“He believed in people, education and goodness. He worked tirelessly to secure peace and life. Even for those who lived far away and under very different circumstances. For him, human dignity was inviolable,” Niinistö said.

In Namibia, he became an honorary citizen.

He was involved in the process of preparing Namibians for independence during his diplomatic spell in Africa in the 1970s.

He was appointed as the special representative to Namibia by then-UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim in 1978, and was widely praised for helping support the nation on its path to independence.

The Namibian government was so grateful for Ahtisaari’s work that it later made him an honorary citizen of the country, as mentioned.

In 1999, meanwhile, he negotiated an end to fighting in the former Yugoslavian province of Kosovo, alongside Russia’s Balkans envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin.

With so much uncertainty in the world at the moment, a few more following in the Finn’s footsteps in the coming months and years would certainly be welcome.