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Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Friends of Martti,
I feel honoured and privileged to be here in Tanzania to share memories of Martti with people who have worked with him over the decades. Tanzania had a very special role in Martti’s life and career. In many ways, is was here that he began his career as a mediator.
Martti was appointed Ambassador of Finland in Dar es Salaam in 1973 and lived here for four years. During this time, he got to know Tanzania and its people very well. He also developed strong relationships of trust with various independence movements and their leaders, including SWAPO from Namibia. These relationships played a key role when the UN General Assembly appointed Ahtisaari as UN Commissioner for Namibia in January 1977. In July 1978, the UN Secretary-General appointed Ahtisaari as his Special Representative to Namibia. This was his first assignment as a mediator.
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After his time in Dar es Salaam, Martti worked as a mediator in six different decades. He mediated peace on three different continents – Africa, Asia and Europe – wearing three different hats: as a UN representative, as President of Finland and as a private actor, Chair of CMI (formerly Crisis Management Initiative, now Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation).
His three major achievements were Namibia, Aceh and Kosovo. While all of these processes were very close to Martti’s heart, Namibia – and Africa more broadly – had perhaps the most significant impact on his career and way of thinking. Aceh and Kosovo were processes that he mediated as a very seasoned diplomat. By then, he knew how critical timing is in peace mediation. When he took up the post of Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Namibia as a relatively young diplomat, many experts and leaders saw the job as a mission impossible.
Martti himself said that one of his main tasks in Namibia was to tour African capitals twice a year and then go back to New York to report on the developments, which were often minimal. Had anyone else said this, it might have sounded a bit cynical. But when Martti said it, he was able to say it in a way that was full of optimism. This particular skill, the ability to find hope in places and issues where others did not, made him an exceptional mediator.
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Next, I would like to look at Martti Ahtisaari and his career from three different perspectives: Martti as a person, as a mediation professional, and as part of the modern history.
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As a person, I would characterise Martti with three words: empathy, optimism and realism.
Martti often described himself as an eternal IDP (internally displaced person). He was born in Karelia and had to leave his home as a young boy when the Soviet Union attacked Finland. This probably shaped his personality and world view, and contributed to his exceptional empathy. He was able to understand the emotions of the parties to a conflict and connect deeply with very different types of people.
Being an eternal IDP did not make Martti cynical or bitter. On the contrary, he believed that optimism is not only an attitude, but also a method. He understood that the way we see things has a significant impact on how they end up. This was his approach also when he worked for more than ten years for the independence of Namibia, wearing different hats, even when others did not believe it was possible.
In Martti, empathy and optimism were combined with crude realism. He saw the world as it was and acted accordingly. The combination of these qualities made him an exceptional mediator. Both parties to a conflict and the international community trusted him. He understood that trust is something that can be built and should be used wisely. While most of the time he was very easy-going, flexible and funny, he was able to choose the issues and situations where parties need to hear what is realistic and what is not. But even in those situations he was able to deliver unpleasant facts in a way that felt almost like a gift to those receiving the message.
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Martti was a true professional. The irony is that he never saw himself as a mediator. In fact, he described his work as that of an honest broker. This meant that he took a very clear, principled position from the very beginning. And only then did he begin the process of exploring what was possible within the given framework.
In Namibia and Kosovo, this principled position was the independence of these countries. In Indonesia, the starting point for the process was autonomy for the province of Aceh. From the beginning of the process, he was very clear that this is the only issue he was prepared to explore in Aceh. And if the parties wanted to discuss independence, they would have to find another mediator. Martti felt that the best way to gain trust was to be completely open with the parties about his intentions, and then the parties could decide whether he was up to the task.
These principled positions were not about ideology. Rather, they were crude ‘realpolitik’ assessments of the situation. For Martti, the key condition for a successful peace process was the alignment of the superpowers and this sets the basic parameters for the process. Without the consensus by the superpowers, sustainable peace is not realistic.
At the same time, Martti was very principled about the idea that only the parties to a conflict can make peace. A mediator – or in his case, an honest broker – can help the parties to explore parameters for peace, but the parties must make the final decisions. This is the only way to ensure that the peace is sustainable.
These parameters were central to all of Martti’s important tasks. The starting point was to find a solution that would maximise fairness and a sense of justice, despite the parameters set by ‘realpolitik’. In Aceh, this led to maximising the various aspects of autonomy, without giving independence to anyone. In Kosovo, it led to a model, where the Serb minorities – who were aligned with Serbia and against the independence of Kosovo – were given very broad minority rights in the constitution of Kosovo.
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While some of the qualities and methods are universal, the work of President Ahtisaari is also part of recent history.
Independence of Namibia is closely linked to the end of the Cold War and apartheid. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the struggle between ideologies lost its relevance, at least for a while. There was more space to think about what was actually good for people and their future. In Aceh, the peace agreement was signed in the aftermath of 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq. That time, there was a strong global consensus on the need to limit the threat posed by non-state armed actors. The Kosovo status process in 2006-2007 took place at a time when the relationship between the United States, Europe and Russia started to crumble.
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The most successful moments in Martti’s career came at a time, when we had more faith in global multilateral institutions and commonly agreed rules than we do today. One might even ask how relevant these lessons are for modern peacemaking. The position of a UN special envoy in the early 2000s is very different from that of a special envoy today. Complexity and uncertainty have increased, and peace processes are messier than ever.
I would say that the lessons are more important than ever. Martti never talked about positions he held. He always talked about the tasks he was given. The need to treat people with dignity, to understand the limits and possibilities of the given context and to find practical solutions to man-made problems are universal skills and qualities for anyone who is given a task to work for the common good.
Thank you!
