NOBEL Peace laureate Martti Ahtisaari, who was Finland’s 10th president between 1994 and 2000, died on Monday (Oct 16) at the age of 86.

Ahtisaari was celebrated around the world for brokering peace in conflict zones in Kosovo, Indonesia and Northern Ireland. He refused to accept that wars and conflicts were inevitable.

“Peace is a question of will. All conflicts can be settled, and there are no excuses for allowing them to become eternal,” Ahtisaari said when he accepted the Nobel award in 2008.

His global fame boosted the image of Finland as it emerged from the shadow of the former Soviet Union.

At home, Ahtisaari was always a political outsider. But it was that very lack of political ties that helped him to win Finland’s first direct presidential election in 1994, at the helm of the opposition Social Democrats.

As president, he supported Finland’s European Union (EU) membership and encouraged voters to support the 1994 accession referendum, which passed with 57 per cent support.

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Opponents criticised his frequent travels – his nickname was “Travelling Mara”, a common diminutive for Martti – and said he should focus more on domestic issues as Finland wallowed in recession triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union, then its main trading partner.

Later, he would stray from his party’s line by encouraging Finland to become a fully fledged Nato member. That was years before the country eventually joined the alliance in 2023, in response to neighbouring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

‘Eternally displaced’

Ahtisaari was born in 1937 in Viipuri (now Vyborg, Russia). His family was forced to flee when Soviet forces attacked when he was two. He said those early years made him “an eternally displaced person”, sensitive to the plight of refugees.

After military service, he became a teacher and took part in an educational project in Pakistan, an experience that he said opened his eyes to the world outside his native country.

He joined Finland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 1965 and was appointed Finnish ambassador to Tanzania in 1973.

One of his first major diplomatic achievements was helping Namibia gain independence after years of bloody conflict with South Africa.

He served as the United Nations commissioner for Namibia from 1977 to 1981, and served on and off in the region in various roles up to the early 1990s.

Acting as point man for the EU in 1999, he persuaded Yugoslav’s then President Slobodan Milosevic to accept Nato’s terms for ending the Kosovo air campaign.

He continued to focus on conflict resolution after leaving the presidency in 2000, helping advance the Northern Ireland peace process as a weapons inspector.

He set up the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), an independent organisation focused on conflict resolution. The group facilitated a peace process between the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement in 2005. His mediation efforts, over seven months, led to an agreement ending a three-decade-long conflict in Aceh.

Later that year, he returned to the Balkans as a UN special envoy. He is widely credited for helping pave the way for Kosovo’s independence with the backing of Western countries in 2008.

Several months afterwards, the Nobel committee gave him the peace prize, citing work on multiple continents over more than three decades.

He is survived by his wife Eeva, and son Marko, a tech entrepreneur and former head of design at Nokia. REUTERS