Calling him an “outstanding international mediator,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2008 to former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari for his efforts to resolve international conflicts across the globe, including Northern Ireland, Namibia, Kosovo, Indonesia and Iraq.
His efforts over three decades, including convening secret meetings in Finland this year between warring Sunni and Shiite groups from Iraq, “have contributed to a more peaceful world and to ‘fraternity between nations’ in Alfred Nobel’s spirit,” the committee statement read in announcing the award.
“He is a world champion when it comes to peace, and he never gives up,” said Ole Danbolt Mjoes, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel awards committee.
Ahtisaari, 71, told Norwegian public broadcasting NRK that he considered his work as U.N. special envoy to Namibia to be his greatest accomplishment. He shepherded the country through a decade of negotiations between South West African Peoples’ Organization (SWAPO) guerrillas and the South African apartheid government, resulting in Namibian independence in 1990.
“Of course Namibia is absolutely the most important since it took so long,” Ahtisaari said.
South Africa took over Namibia during World War I and despite a U.N.-mandated end to its rule in 1966, continued to hold the territory for decades as a buffer against Marxist Angola. In negotiations, Ahtisaari had to juggle the interests of an array of stakeholders who saw southwest Africa as a frontline in the Cold War, including the United States, former colonial ruler Germany, Cuba and the Soviet Union.
Namibia’s former prime minister and speaker of parliament Theo-Ben Gurirab, who was SWAPO’s envoy to the U.N. during Ahtisaari’s mediation, told the German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur that the award was “a deserved honor” for Ahtisaari. “It took decades, it took death, it took betrayal, it took suffering, but in the end he was part of the team that brought about the independence of Namibia.”
Ahtisaari was born in Karelia, Finland, which he left at age 2 during a 1939 Soviet invasion, an experience he has described as having given him a sensitivity to the plight of refugees caught up in wars.
He began his international diplomatic career as Finland’s ambassador to Tanzania in 1973, serving as his country’s youngest ambassador. He then served at the United Nations in New York, became U.N. Commissioner for Namibia in 1977 and was named the U.N. envoy there the following year.
In 1994, Ahtisaari was voted Finland’s first directly elected president, a largely ceremonial office that he held for one six-year term before returning to his first love of foreign affairs.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
