Ahtisaari was aUnited Nations special envoy forKosovo, charged with organizing theKosovo status process negotiations. These negotiations aimed to resolve a long-running dispute in Kosovo, which laterdeclared its independence fromSerbia in 2008. In October 2008, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts".[1] The Nobel statement said that Ahtisaari had played a prominent role in resolving serious and long-lasting conflicts, including ones inNamibia,Aceh (Indonesia),[2] Kosovo and Serbia, andIraq.[3]
Martti Ahtisaari was born inViipuri, Finland (now Vyborg, Russia) on 23 June 1937.[4] His father, Oiva Ahtisaari, whose grandfather Julius Marenius Adolfsen had emigrated with his parents toKotka, Finland in 1872 fromTistedalen in Southern Norway,[5] tookFinnishcitizenship in 1929 andFinnicized his surname from Adolfsen in 1935.[6] Oiva was working as aNCO in the supply troops in Viipuri when Martti was born.[6]
TheContinuation War (World War II) took Oiva Ahtisaari to the front as a non-commissioned officer army mechanic, while Martti's mother, Tyyne, moved toKuopio with her son to escape immediate danger from the war in 1940.[7][6] Kuopio was where Ahtisaari spent most of his childhood,[8] eventually attendingKuopion Lyseo high school.[6]
In 1952, Martti Ahtisaari moved toOulu with his family.[6] There he continued his education inhigh school, graduating in 1956.[8] He also joined the localYMCA.[6] After completing his military service (Ahtisaari held the rank ofcaptain in theFinnish Army Reserve),[9] he began to study at Oulu teachers' college, attending the two-year course which enabled him to qualify as a primary-school teacher in 1959.[6]
In the summer of 1960, Ahtisaari signed the contract for the position of director of the Swedish Agency for International Development physical education boarding school inKarachi, Pakistan, after interviewing in Sweden and hearing about the offer announced by the YMCA in April of that year.[6][4] There, he also trained as a teacher.[6]
He returned to Finland in 1963 and began his studies in theHelsinki School of Economics and soon became the Executive Director of the Helsinki International Student Club and Student International Aid, where he made friends with NamibianNickey Iyambo.[6] He also joined the international students' organisationAIESEC.[10] In 1965, he joined theMinistry for Foreign Affairs[4] in its Bureau for International Development Aid, to set up the International Development Assistance Office together with Jaakko Iloniemi, which was a pioneering office, as the Finnish presence in international cooperation in the Third World was non-existent.[11] Ahtisaari remained in that office until 1972, where he served from 1971 as assistant to the director, a position he combined with his presence on the Government's Advisory Committee for Trade and Industry Affairs of Developing Countries.[12]
Following the death of a later UN Commissioner for Namibia,Bernt Carlsson, onPan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988 – on the eve of the signing of theTripartite Accord atUN Headquarters – Ahtisaari was sent toNamibia in April 1989 as theUN Special Representative to head theUnited Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG).[12] Because of the illegal incursion ofSWAPO troops fromAngola, the South African appointed Administrator-General (AG),Louis Pienaar, sought Ahtisaari's agreement to the deployment ofSADF troops to stabilize the situation. Ahtisaari took advice from British prime ministerMargaret Thatcher, who was visiting the region at the time, and approved the SADF deployment. A period of intense fighting ensued when at least 375 SWAPO insurgents were killed.[14] In July 1989,Glenys Kinnock andTessa Blackstone of theBritish Council of Churches visited Namibia and reported: "There is a widespread feeling that too many concessions were made to South African personnel and preferences and that Martti Ahtisaari was not forceful enough in his dealings with the South Africans."[15]
Perhaps because of his reluctance to authorise thisSADF deployment, Ahtisaari was alleged to have been targeted by theSouth AfricanCivil Cooperation Bureau (CCB). According to a hearing in September 2000 of the South AfricanTruth and Reconciliation Commission, two CCB operatives (Kobus le Roux and Ferdinand Barnard) were tasked not to kill Ahtisaari, but to give him "a good hiding". To carry out the assault, Barnard had planned to use the grip handle of a metal saw as a knuckleduster. In the event, Ahtisaari did not attend the meeting at the Keetmanshoop Hotel, where Le Roux and Barnard lay in wait for him, and thus Ahtisaari escaped injury.[16]
After the independence elections of 1989, Ahtisaari and his wife were made honorary Namibian citizens in 1992.[6] South Africa gave him theO R Tambo award for "his outstanding achievement as a diplomat and commitment to the cause of freedom in Africa and peace in the world".[17]
Ahtisaari served as UN undersecretary-general for administration and management from 1987 to 1991 causing mixed feelings inside the organisation during an internal investigation of massive fraud. When Ahtisaari revealed in 1990 that he had secretly lengthened the grace period allowing UN officials to return misappropriated taxpayer money from the original three months to three years, the investigators were furious. The 340 officials found guilty of fraud were able to return money even after their crime had been proven. The harshest punishment was the firing of twenty corrupt officials.[18][19][20][6]
On 31 July 1991, he was appointed Secretary of State at theMinistry for Foreign Affairs of Finland in theEsko Aho's government.[6][12] After theGulf War, Ahtisaari headed a team tasked with reporting to the UN on changes in the situation and humanitarian needs.[6][12] The report did not meet these expectations and was believed to have eroded American support for Ahtisaari's candidacy for the UN Secretary-General.[6]
Between 1992 and 1993, Ahtisaari chaired the UN Conference on Yugoslavia's Working Group on Bosnia and Herzegovina and became the special assistant toCyrus Vance, the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Croatia.[12][6]
Ahtisaari holding a press conference during the 1994 presidential electionFinland's presidentMauno Koivisto and his successor Martti Ahtisaari in 1994Ahtisaari withBill Clinton andBoris Yeltsin in 1997Ahtisaari withCarlos Menem in 1997
Finland's ongoingrecession caused established political figures to lose public support, and thepresidential elections were now direct instead of being conducted through an electoral college.[21][6][12] TheSocial Democratic Party of Finland's candidate to succeedMauno Koivisto as President of Finland was decided in a primary between Ahtisaari and former Prime Minister and diplomatKalevi Sorsa. Ahtisaari led in the polls against Sorsa, who was already a popular and experienced politician and won the primaries on 16 May 1993 with 61% of the votes.[12][6]
After the primaries, Ahtisaari returned to his work in Geneva, and did not start his presidential campaign until the end of October.[6] Ahtisaari narrowly won over his second round opponent,Elisabeth Rehn of theSwedish People's Party.[12] During the campaign, there were rumours spread by some political opponents of Ahtisaari that he had a drinking problem or that he had knowingly accepted a double salary from the Finnish Foreign Ministry and from the United Nations while trying to negotiate an end to the Bosnian War. Ahtisaari denied both allegations and no firm proof of them has emerged. During the three-week campaign between the two rounds of presidential elections, Ahtisaari was praised by his supporters for being more compassionate towards the many unemployed Finns than Rehn, who as Defence Minister had to officially support the Aho government's strict economic policies. A minor controversy arose during a town hall-style presidential debate inLappeenranta, southeastern Finland when an apparently born-again Christian woman in the audience asked Rehn what her relationship with Jesus was. Rehn replied that she had personally no proof that Jesus had been a historical person. Ahtisaari ducked a precise answer by stating that he trusted the Lutheran confession even on this issue.[22][23][24] He was sworn in on 1 March 1994.[12]
His term as president began with a schism within theCentre Party government led by prime ministerEsko Aho, who did not approve of Ahtisaari's being actively involved in foreign policy. There was also some controversy over Ahtisaari's speaking out on domestic issues such as unemployment. He travelled extensively in Finland and abroad, and was nicknamed "Matka-Mara" ("Travel-Mara", Mara being a common diminutive form of Martti). His monthly travels throughout the country and his meetings with ordinary citizens (the so-calledmaakuntamatkat or "provincial trips") nonetheless greatly enhanced his political popularity. Ahtisaari kept his campaign promise to visit one Finnish historical province every month during his presidency. He also donated some thousands ofFinnish marks per month to the unemployed people's organisations, and a few thousand Finnish marks to the Christian social organisation of the late lay preacher and social workerVeikko Hursti.[25][26]
Ahtisaari favoured pluralism and religious tolerance publicly. Privately, he and his wife practised their Christian faith. Contrary to some of his predecessors and his successor as the Finnish President, Ahtisaari ended all of his New Year's speeches by wishing the Finnish people God's blessing.[27]
In January 1998 Ahtisaari was criticized by some NGOs, politicians and notable cultural figures because he awarded Commander of theOrder of the Lion of Finland to the Forest Minister ofIndonesia and to the main owner of the Indonesian RGM Company, a parent company of the April Company. The April Company was criticized by non-governmental organisations for destroyingrain forests, and Indonesia itself was criticized heavily for human rights violations, especially inEast Timor. Ahtisaari's party chairmanErkki Tuomioja said that giving medals was questionable since he feared the act may tarnish the public image of Finnish human rights policy. Students of the arts had demonstrations in Helsinki against the decision to give medals.[28][29]
President Ahtisaari publicly supported Finland's entry into theEuropean Union, and in a 1994referendum, 57 percent of Finnish voters were in favour of EU membership.[9][30] He later stated that if Finland had not voted to join the EU he would have resigned.[31] The promotion of a European collective security system and Nordic cooperation, as well as a security policy without membership of NATO, were central to Ahtisaari's foreign policy.[6]
Ahtisaari's lack of restrained involvement in public affairs and his pronouncements on domestic and economic policy provoked reservations both in Parliament itself and in the Social Democratic Party of Finland, and led Ahtisaari not to stand for re-election in2000, which was announced in April 1999, and also alleged that two members of the SDP also ran as candidates.[12][9] Ahtisaari was the last "strong president", before the2000 constitution reduced the president's powers. He was succeeded byTarja Halonen on 1 March 2000.[12]
Ahtisaari mediating theKosovo crisis with U.S. and Russian defence ministers in 1999Martti Ahtisaari at theWorld Economic Forum in 2000
In Finnish politics, Ahtisaari long stressed how important it is forFinland to join NATO.[34] Ahtisaari argued that Finland should be a full member of NATO and the EU in order "to shrug off once and for all the burden ofFinlandization".[35] He believed politicians should file application and make Finland a member. He said that the way Finnish politicians avoided expressing their opinions was disturbing.[36] He also noted that the so-called "NATO option" (acquiring membership if Finland were to be threatened) was an illusion, making an analogy to trying to obtain fire insurance when the fire has already started.[37] Finland joined NATO on 4 April 2023, while Ahtisaari was still alive.[38]
After leaving office, Ahtisaari held positions in various international organisations. In 2000, he became Chairman of the Brussels-basedInternational Crisis Group,[39] an NGO to which he committed $100,000 in government funding in 1994 one month after becoming elected President of Finland.[40] He remained Chairman Emeritus.[41]
In November 2005,UN Secretary-GeneralKofi Annan appointed Ahtisaari as Special Envoy for theKosovo status process which was to determine whether Kosovo, having been administered by the United Nations since 1999, should become independent or remain a province ofSerbia. In early 2006, Ahtisaari opened the UN Office of the Special Envoy for Kosovo (UNOSEK) inVienna, Austria, from where he conducted the Kosovo status negotiations. Those opposed to Ahtisaari's settlement proposal, which involved an internationally monitored independence for Kosovo, sought to discredit him. Allegations made by Balkan media sources of corruption and improper conduct by Ahtisaari were described byUS State Department spokesman Tom Casey as "spurious", adding that Ahtisaari's plan is the "best solution possible" and has the "full endorsement of the United States".[45]The New York Times suggested that this criticism of Ahtisaari on the part of the Serbs had led to the "bogging down" of the Kosovo status talks.[46] In November 2008, Serbian media reported Pierre Mirel, director of the EU enlargement commission's western Balkans division as saying: "The EU has accepted that the deployment ofEULEX has to be approved by theUnited Nations Security Council, and that the mission has to be neutral and will not be related to the Ahtisaari plan," Mirel said, following his meeting with Serbia's vice-presidentBozidar Djelic.[47]
In July 2007, however, when theEU, Russia and the United States agreed to find a new format for the talks, Ahtisaari announced that he regarded his mission as over. Since neither the UN nor the troika had asked him to continue mediations in the face of Russia's persistent refusal to support independence for Kosovo, he said he would nonetheless be willing to take on "a role as consultant", if requested.[48] After a period of uncertainty and mounting tension, Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia in February 2008.[49]
In his work, he emphasised the importance of the United States in the peace process, stating that "There can be no peace without America."[50]
Ahtisaari was chairman of theInterpeace Governing Council from 2000 to 2009.[51][52][53] Beginning in 2009, Ahtisaari was Chairman Emeritus and a Special Advisor.[54]
In August 2012, Ahtisaari opined on the sectarian violence inSyria[2] and was mentioned as a possible replacement as Joint Envoy there to succeed formerSecretary-GeneralKofi Annan.[61][62] However, Ahtisaari then told the Finnish state broadcasterYLE that "he wished the mission would fall on someone else"[63] which it ultimately did in the person ofLakhdar Brahimi, a formerAlgerian foreign minister and longtime U.N. diplomat.[64]
In late 2015, Martti Ahtisaari reiterated charges he already had made in an interview with German broadcasterDeutsche Welle in early 2013 against members of theUN security council on the obstruction of a political solution to the escalating conflict in Syria.[65] Ahtisaari said in an interview in September 2015 that he held talks about Syria with envoys from the five permanent members of theUN security council in February 2012. According to Ahtisaari,Vitaly Churkin, Russian ambassador to theUnited Nations, laid out three points during a meeting with him, which included not arming the Syrian opposition, commencing talks between Syrian presidentAssad and the opposition and finding "an elegant way for Assad to step aside". But the US, Britain and France subsequently ignored the proposal. Ahtisaari said in the interview: "Nothing happened because I think all these, and many others, were convinced that Assad would be thrown out of office in a few weeks so there was no need to do anything."[66]
In 1968, he marriedEeva Irmeli Hyvärinen,[67] who was studying history at the University of Helsinki and whom he met as a child at the Lyceum in Kuopio. They had one son,Marko Ahtisaari, who was born in 1969.[68]
On 24 March 2020, amid thelarge-scale outbreak ofCOVID-19, it was announced that Ahtisaari had tested positive for the disease.[69] His spouse, Eeva Ahtisaari, was diagnosed with the same virus on 21 March. Eeva Ahtisaari had attended theInternational Women's Day concert on 8 March at theHelsinki Music Centre while infected.[70] On 14 April 2020 it was announced that Martti and Eeva Ahtisaari were recovering from the coronavirus infection.[71]
On 2 September 2021, it was announced that Ahtisaari hadAlzheimer's disease and had retired from public life.[72]
The grave of Martti Ahtisaari at the Hietaniemi Cemetery in Helsinki
On 10 October 2008, Ahtisaari was announced as that year's recipient of theNobel Peace Prize. Ahtisaari received the prize on 10 December 2008 atOslo City Hall in Norway.[78] Ahtisaari twice worked to find a solution inKosovo – first in 1999 and again between 2005 and 2007. The committee said he also worked with others this year to find a peaceful solution to the problems inIraq. According to the committee, Ahtisaari and his group,Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), also contributed to resolving other conflicts inNorthern Ireland,Central Asia, and theHorn of Africa.[79][80][81] Ahtisaari invited Prime MinisterMatti Vanhanen, Foreign Affairs MinisterAlexander Stubb and others to his Nobel event, but not President Halonen.[82]
According to the memoir of the former secretary of theNorwegian Nobel Committee,Geir Lundestad, former Foreign Minister and UN ambassadorKeijo Korhonen, who was strongly against awarding the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize to Ahtisaari, wrote a letter to the committee which negatively portrayed Ahtisaari as a person and his merits in international conflict zones.[83]
^Arter, David (1994). "The 1994 Finnish presidential election: Honesty was not the best policy!".West European Politics.17 (4):190–192.doi:10.1080/01402389408425049.ISSN0140-2382.
^Mitä Missä Milloin — Kansalaisen vuosikirja 1995 ("What Where When — Citizen's Yearbook 1995"), Helsinki: Otava Publications Ltd., 1994.
^Anja Snellman and Saska Saarikoski, "The Third Round" / Kolmas kierros, published in Finland in 1994.
^Pertti Sainio, "Secret Operation Ahtisaari" / Operaatio Salainen Ahtisaari, published in Finland in 1993.
^Mitä Missä Milloin — Kansalaisen vuosikirjat 1995, 2000, 2001 ("What Where When — Citizen's Yearbooks 1995, 2000, 2001")
^Veikko Hursti, "For I Was Hungry ..." / Sillä minun oli nälkä ... (autobiography), published in Finland in 1997.
^Barbara Crossette (1 December 2008)."Peace Prize Comes With Criticism".The Nation. Archived fromthe original on 6 April 2019. Retrieved5 April 2019.After his term as president of Finland ended in 2000, Ahtisaari became board chairman of the International Crisis Group, an independent analysis and advocacy organization based in Brussels.
^Stephen Solarz (2010)."Transforming an Idea into Reality".1995–2010 Fifteen Years on the Front Lines – International Crisis Group. ICG. p. 12. Archived fromthe original on 7 March 2013.Martti Ahtisaari, had just been elected President of Finland a month earlier. When I explained to Martti what we had in mind, he immediately and graciously offered to provide $100,000 in funding from Finland
^"Board of Trustees".International Crisis Group. ICG. 22 July 2016. Archived fromthe original on 5 April 2019. Retrieved5 April 2019.Chairmen Emeriti – Martti Ahtisaari
^"Reports of the Weapons Inspectors".Reports and Statements by the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD).CAIN.Archived from the original on 6 December 2010. Retrieved11 October 2008.
^"Oikeutettu Sota?".Vihreä Lanka (in Finnish). 2003.Archived from the original on 10 May 2015. Retrieved28 October 2015.
^Department Of State. The Office of Electronic Information, Bureau of Public Affairs (13 July 2007)."Daily Press Briefing – July 13".2001-2009.state.gov.Archived from the original on 3 August 2020. Retrieved25 May 2019.
^"General Assembly adopts Resolution on Syria", transcript of UK Ambassador SirMark Lyall Grant's remarks at the 'stakeout' after adoption of the resolution, British UN Mission website, 3 August 2012. Ahtisaari's name only mentioned in a media question. No comment from Grant. Retrieved 3 August 2012.
^Icelandic Presidency Website (Icelandic), Order of the Falcon,Martti & Eeva AhtisaariArchived 13 March 2016 at theWayback Machine, 26 September 1995, Grand Cross with Collar & Grand Cross respectively
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