Martti Ahtisaari: From Viborg to Nobel Peace Prize – A Lifelong Commitment

Martti Oiva Kalevi Ahtisaari was born in 1937. His hometown was then called Viborg. Then it was Finnish. Now it is called Vyborg and is Russian. His father was an officer in the Finnish army. The family moved a lot. The young Martti spent his early years in a barracks town in Kuopio.

Because of the father’s work, the family moved on to Oulu. Here, young Martti distinguished himself as a skilled basketball player. He later took military training and a teacher training college.

HOMETOWN: Ahtisaari was born in Viborg in southeast Finland. Now the city is called Vyborg and is located in Russia.

Photo: Dmitri Lovetsky / AP

Norwegian family

Martti Ahtisaari had both Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish descent. Great-great-grandfather Adolf Olaus Jakobsen moved from Tistedalen in Halden to Finland in 1872. His successors took the name Adolfsen. But Martti’s father “finished” the Norwegian-sounding “Adolfsen” into “Ahtisaari”.

Throughout his life, Ahtisaari was a strong advocate for preserving bilingualism in Finland. He wanted to raise the status of the Swedish language. Ahtisaari believed that it helped to strengthen the Finns’ Nordic affiliation.

For this work, he received the Nordic Language Prize in 2015.

African involvement

But it is another award that made Martti Ahtisaari world famous. In 2008, he became the first (and so far only) Finn to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

AWARDED: Martti Ahtisaari poses with the Nobel diploma and medal in Oslo City Hall in 2008.

Photo: Ints Kalnins / REUTERS

Because even though Ahtisaari trained as a teacher, something completely different was to fill his career. In 1960, he had a whim. He responded to an advertisement in which the YMCA was looking for helpers for an aid project in Pakistan. Ahtisaari stayed three years in the country.

He ran a boarding school at a sports school in Karachi. And thus a lifelong commitment was found.

COMMITMENT: Martti Ahtisaari’s commitment to Africa brought him close to the continent. Here with then Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan in 1999.

Photo: Peter Morgan/REUTERS

In 1965, Ahtisaari got a position in the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ department for development work. Here he contributed to a number of aid projects, especially in East Africa.

In 1973, aged just 36, he was appointed Finland’s ambassador to Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania. He was also strongly committed to Namibia and their struggle for independence from South Africa.

This led to Ahtisaari later becoming the UN’s special envoy to Namibia.

NAMIBIA: Martti Ahtisaari holds a press conference after the country held elections in 1989. He announced that the elections had been free and fair and that the country could move forward with its independence.

Foto: Billy Paddock / AP

He thus became very central in the country’s liberation struggle. When independence was a fact in 1990, he and his wife Eeva Ahtisaari were appointed honorary citizens of Namibia.

The way home

After this, he became Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations. He was given responsibility for finances and administration. There is speculation as to whether Ahtisaari was actually intended for the post of UN chief. But his criticism of the US’s role in the Gulf War in 1991 may have led the Americans to withdraw their support for him as the new Secretary-General.

CRITICISM: Martti Ahtisaari criticized the US during the Gulf War in 1991. It may have cost him his position as UN Secretary-General.

Photo: David Longstreath / AP

Instead, he went home and started working in the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs again.

MIDDLE EAST: Martti Ahtisaari also had several assignments in the Middle East. Here with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Yasir Arafat in Gaza in 1999.

Photo: Fayez Nureldine / AFP

But in Finland there was an atmosphere of crisis. The Soviet Union had fallen. Finnish trade with its neighbor to the east was more than halved. Unemployment increased. It was almost up to 20 percent.

The politicians devalued the Finnish mark, The result was that the lending rate increased to 18.9 per cent. People’s homes plummeted in value.

Trust in the politicians was minimal.

In the midst of this, Finland was to hold direct elections for the president for the first time. Previously, this had been done with voters. In the Social Democratic Party, many advocated finding a candidate who could not be linked to the economic crisis.

MEETING: Martti Ahtisaari had close contact with neighboring countries to the west, Here with the then prime ministers Gro Harlem Brundtland and Carl Bildt in Norway and Sweden respectively.

Photo: Marja Seppänen-Helin / NTB

Ahtisaari had joined the party at the age of 19. But he had never pursued active politics. In other words, he could be perfect, several thought. Ahtisaari launched his candidacy and defeated party veteran Kalevi Sorsa in the primary.

In the presidential election itself, two rounds were needed. In the second round, he beat the Swedish People’s Party’s candidate Elisabeth Rehn with a quarter of a million votes.

He was inaugurated as Finnish President on 1 March 1994.

NEWLY ELECTED: Martti Ahtisaari and First Lady Eeva wave to the Finnish people during the inauguration ceremony in Helsinki in 1994.

Photo: NTB

Averted his gaze

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 also made it easier for Finland to look west. In 1994, Finland held a referendum on EU membership.

EU LEADERS: In the summer of 1995, the then French President Jacques Chirac invited the EU leaders to the Elysee Palace in Paris. Martti Ahtisaari is on the far left in the second row.

Photo: Francois Mori / Ap

Ahtisaari was an EU supporter. And it was also a relatively convincing majority. 57% voted “yes”, 43% voted “no”.

Ahtisaari stated in a TV interview in 2015 that he was ready to resign as Finnish president, if the vote had resulted in a “no”.

In 1999, Finland became as one of the first, and the only Nordic countries, to join the euro cooperation.

Ahtisaari himself attended the summits of the European Council, together with the Prime Minister.

HAND OUT: Relations between the US and Russia were somewhat better during the time of Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin. Here from a meeting that Martti Ahtisaari had arranged for in 1997, and which became extremely important for NATO’s eastward expansion.

Photo: AFP

He was also the architect behind a summit meeting in Helsinki in 1997. Then the presidents Bill Clinton from the USA and Boris Yeltsin from Russia met again. The most important thing that came out of this meeting was the agreement on the expansion of NATO in Eastern Europe.

Towards the end of his presidency, he was also given the role of mediator in the Kosovo crisis in 1999. Together with Russia’s then Foreign Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, Ahtisaari managed to get Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milošević to agree to NATO and Russia’s joint peace terms.

He also believed that Finland should join NATO already then.

But at the same time must have understood that it would cause too much unrest. Finland had enough to adapt to its new role in the EU.

NEGOTIATIONS: Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, Viktor Tjernomyrdin of the Russian government and Martti Ahtisaari of the European Union agree on a peace agreement for Kosovo in 1999.

Foto: Rade Prelic / REUTERS

He did not want to stand as a candidate for a new term in 2000. Ahtisaari was a popular president. He was praised for putting Finland on the map. But he was also criticized for not being particularly concerned with domestic politics.

There were those who believed that he also did not follow the party’s ideological line closely enough.

Lord in own house

After he moved out of the presidential palace, he formed his own company. The Crisis Management Initiative (CMI) aims to carry out peace work and conflict resolution. Now it is a foundation: Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation

He continued his work in several countries in Africa. But also operated in Kosovo and Indonesia through the start of the 2000s. For “his work on several continents and over thirty years to resolve international conflicts” he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008.

ONE OF THE LAST: Martti Ahtisaari attended the opening of a children’s hospital in Helsinki in 2018. This was among his last public appearances.

Photo: Vesa Moilanen / Reuters

Ahtisaari withdrew more and more from the public eye in recent years.

In September 2021, the President’s Office announced that Ahtisaari would retire from public life entirely due to dementia.

In the morning, at 06.40, on Monday 16 October, Martti Ahtisaari fell asleep quietly. He lived to be 86 years old.

HALF-MAST: The flag will be flown at half-mast in the Finnish presidential palace after the death of Martti Ahtisaari on Monday 16 October.

Photo: Roni Rekomaa / Reuters
2023-10-16 12:29:32
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