COMMUNICATION

The Board of Trustees and staff of the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste Foundation regret the death of Martti Ahtisaari, former president of Finland and Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2008. Ahtisaari was a member of the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste. He occupied the Nicolaus Capernicus Chair during the ceremony of the Carlos V European Award to Simone Veil on 18 June 2008. (16/10/2023)

Martti Ahtisaari was president of Finland from 1994 to 2000; during his term, the Nordic country joined the European Union. Ahtisaari was noted for his work in resolving international conflicts and as a peace mediator. Among others, Ahtisaari helped to achieve peace agreements associated with the Serbian withdrawal from Kosovo in the late 1990s; Namibia’s struggle for independence in the 1980s; and the autonomy of the Indonesian province of Aceh in 2005. He also participated in the Northern Ireland peace process in the late 1990s, as he was responsible for overseeing the disarmament of the IRA terrorist group.

In October 2008, the Norwegian Nobel Peace Committee recognised Ahtisaari “for his great efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts”.

Martti Ahtisaari was closely related to the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste. Among other activities, he participated in the Academy of Yuste’s meeting where the declaration “What All European Schoolchildren Should Learn About Europe. Towards an Interactive Curriculum on European Civilisation for Highschool Students” (2008) was adopted; he was one of the members of the jury of the 2010 Carlos V European Award.