Martti Ahtisaari
Martti Oiva Kalevi Ahtisaari (Finnish: [ˈmɑrtːi ˈʔoi̯ʋɑ ˈkɑleʋi ˈʔɑhtisɑːri] ⓘ; 23 June 1937 – 16 October 2023) was a Finnish politician, the tenth president of Finland, from 1994 to 2000, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and a United Nations diplomat and mediator noted for his international peace work.
Martti Ahtisaari
Richard Müller
23 June 1937
Viipuri, Finland (now Vyborg, Russia)
16 October 2023 (aged 86)
Helsinki, Finland
Nobel Peace Prize (2008)
Ahtisaari was a United Nations special envoy for Kosovo, charged with organizing the Kosovo status process negotiations. These negotiations aimed to resolve a long-running dispute in Kosovo, which later declared its independence from Serbia 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 in Namibia, Aceh (Indonesia),[2] Kosovo and Serbia, and Iraq.[3]
Diplomatic career[edit]
In the Namibian independence transition[edit]
Ahtisaari began his diplomatic career in 1973 when he became Finland's Ambassador to Tanzania, Zambia, Somalia and Mozambique, an office he held until 1977.[12][13][6] This new mission allowed him to get closer to East African affairs, monitoring from Dar es Salaam the independence process of Namibia and maintaining close contacts with South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO).[6] In 1977 he was recalled by the United Nations to succeed Seán MacBride as United Nations Commissioner for Namibia, a post he held until 1981, and as representative of Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim from 1978.[4][12]
Following the death of a later UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, on Pan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988 – on the eve of the signing of the Tripartite Accord at UN Headquarters – Ahtisaari was sent to Namibia in April 1989 as the UN Special Representative to head the United Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG).[12] Because of the illegal incursion of SWAPO troops from Angola, the South African appointed Administrator-General (AG), Louis Pienaar, sought Ahtisaari's agreement to the deployment of SADF troops to stabilize the situation. Ahtisaari took advice from British prime minister Margaret 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 and Tessa Blackstone of the British 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 this SADF deployment, Ahtisaari was alleged to have been targeted by the South African Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB). According to a hearing in September 2000 of the South African Truth 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 the O 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]
Other roles[edit]
On 31 July 1991, he was appointed Secretary of State at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland in the Esko Aho's government.[6][12] After the Gulf 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 to Cyrus Vance, the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Croatia.[12][6]
Coat of Arms of Martti Ahtisaari
Martti Ahtisaari
1994
Se pystyy ken uskaltaa ("The one who dares, can")
