1. The Nobel statement said that Martti Ahtisaari had played a prominent role in resolving serious and long-lasting conflicts, including ones in Namibia, Aceh, Kosovo and Serbia, and Iraq.
47 Facts About Martti Ahtisaari
1. 2.
Martti Ahtisaari was born in Viipuri, Finland on 23 June 1937.
3.
Kuopio was where Martti Ahtisaari spent most of his childhood, eventually attending Kuopion Lyseo high school.
4.
In 1952, Martti Ahtisaari moved to Oulu with his family.
5.
Martti Ahtisaari returned to Finland in 1963 and began his studies in the Helsinki School of Economics and soon became the Executive Director of the Helsinki International Student Club and Student International Aid, where he made friends with Namibian Nickey Iyambo.
6.
Martti 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.
7.
Martti 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.
8.
Martti Ahtisaari took advice from British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who was visiting the region at the time, and approved the SADF deployment.
9.
Martti 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.
10.
When Martti 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.
11.
Between 1992 and 1993, Martti 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.
Martti Ahtisaari narrowly won over his second round opponent, Elisabeth Rehn of the Swedish People's Party.
13.
Martti Ahtisaari denied both allegations and no firm proof of them has emerged.
14.
Martti Ahtisaari ducked a precise answer by stating that he trusted the Lutheran confession even on this issue.
15.
Martti Ahtisaari travelled extensively in Finland and abroad, and was nicknamed "Matka-Mara".
16.
Martti Ahtisaari kept his campaign promise to visit one Finnish historical province every month during his presidency.
17.
Martti Ahtisaari donated some thousands of Finnish 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 worker Veikko Hursti.
18.
Contrary to some of his predecessors and his successor as the Finnish President, Martti Ahtisaari ended all of his New Year's speeches by wishing the Finnish people God's blessing.
19.
In January 1998 Martti Ahtisaari was criticized by some NGOs, politicians and notable cultural figures because he awarded Commander of the Order of the Lion of Finland to the Forest Minister of Indonesia and to the main owner of the Indonesian RGM Company, a parent company of the April Company.
20.
President Martti Ahtisaari publicly supported Finland's entry into the European Union, and in a 1994 referendum, 57 percent of Finnish voters were in favour of EU membership.
21.
Martti Ahtisaari later stated that if Finland had not voted to join the EU he would have resigned.
22.
Martti Ahtisaari negotiated alongside Viktor Chernomyrdin with Slobodan Milosevic to end the fighting in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo in 1999.
23.
Martti Ahtisaari was the last "strong president", before the 2000 constitution reduced the president's powers.
24.
Martti Ahtisaari was succeeded by Tarja Halonen on 1 March 2000.
25.
In Finnish politics, Martti Ahtisaari long stressed how important it is for Finland to join NATO.
26.
Martti 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 of Finlandization".
27.
Martti Ahtisaari believed politicians should file application and make Finland a member.
28.
Martti Ahtisaari said that the way Finnish politicians avoided expressing their opinions was disturbing.
29.
Martti Ahtisaari noted that the so-called "NATO option" was an illusion, making an analogy to trying to obtain fire insurance when the fire has already started.
30.
Finland joined NATO on 4 April 2023, while Martti Ahtisaari was still alive.
31.
Martti Ahtisaari founded the independent Crisis Management Initiative with the goal of developing and sustaining peace in troubled areas.
32.
On 1 December 2000, Ahtisaari was awarded the J William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding by the Fulbright Association in recognition of his work as a peacemaker in some of the world's most troubled areas.
33.
In 2003 Ahtisaari defended George W Bush's attack to Iraq, describing it as humanitarian intervention, which incited criticism from professor of history Juha Sihvola.
34.
In early 2006, Martti Ahtisaari opened the UN Office of the Special Envoy for Kosovo in Vienna, Austria, from where he conducted the Kosovo status negotiations.
35.
In July 2007 when the EU, Russia and the United States agreed to find a new format for the talks, Martti Ahtisaari announced that he regarded his mission as over.
36.
Martti Ahtisaari was chairman of the Interpeace Governing Council from 2000 to 2009.
37.
In September 2009 Martti Ahtisaari joined The Elders, a group of independent global leaders who work together on peace and human rights issues.
38.
Martti Ahtisaari travelled to the Korean Peninsula with fellow Elders Gro Harlem Brundtland, Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson in April 2011, and to South Sudan with Robinson and Archbishop Desmond Tutu in July 2012.
39.
Martti Ahtisaari was a member of the board of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
40.
In late 2015, Martti Ahtisaari reiterated charges he already had made in an interview with German broadcaster Deutsche Welle in early 2013 against members of the UN security council on the obstruction of a political solution to the escalating conflict in Syria.
41.
Martti Ahtisaari said in an interview in September 2015 that he held talks about Syria with envoys from the five permanent members of the UN security council in February 2012.
42.
On 24 March 2020, amid the large-scale outbreak of COVID-19, it was announced that Martti Ahtisaari had tested positive for the disease.
43.
On 2 September 2021, it was announced that Martti Ahtisaari had Alzheimer's disease and had retired from public life.
44.
Martti Ahtisaari died from complications of Alzheimer's disease in Helsinki, on 16 October 2023, at age 86.
45.
On 10 October 2008, Martti Ahtisaari was announced as that year's recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
46.
Martti Ahtisaari received the prize on 10 December 2008 at Oslo City Hall in Norway.
47.
Martti Ahtisaari invited Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Stubb and others to his Nobel event, but not President Halonen.