Former Finnish President and friend of The Fletcher School, Martti Ahtisaari, received the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 2008.
Ahtisaari, who has visited the Tufts campus various times in the past, was most recently in Medford to receive the Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award on September 22, 2008.
During his long career as an expert mediator, he led the process to secure the Aceh Accord—finalized in 2005—which brought an end to more than 30 years of fighting between the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement or Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (GAM).
Fletcher’s own Hassan Wirajuda, F84, the Foreign Minister of Indonesia; Sofyan Djalil, F93, then Indonesian Minister for Communications and Information and current minister of state-owned enterprises; and Pieter Feith, F70, former head of the Aceh Monitoring Mission and current director general for politico-military affairs of the EU since 2001, all were critical to the success of the accord.
In addition to collaborating for Aceh, Ahtisaari and Feith, along with former German Ambassador to the UK and the US, Wolfgang Ischinger, F73, formed part of the core European Union advisory leadership for Kosovo’s independence.
Much to the appreciation of the Fletcher community, Ahtisaari will join the school for its annual Talloires Symposium in May 2009 in Talloires, France. The Nobel Prize recipient is slated to give the keynote address during the three-day event.