Nobel Peace Prize Winner is an AIESEC Alumnus!!

The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded its 2008 peace prize on Friday to Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president who has been associated over decades with peace efforts and quiet, cautious diplomacy from Asia to Africa and Europe.

Out of 197 people nominated for the annual prize, the committee said, Mr. Ahtisaari had been chosen for his important efforts in several continents and over three decades to resolve international conflicts.

To outsiders, Mr. Ahtisaari, 71, has often seemed an undemonstrative and aloof figure. But some people who worked with him praised what Gareth Evans, the head of the nongovernmental International Crisis Group in Brussels called charm and humor in dealing with his various negotiating partners.

He has played a central role in ending conflicts that took root in the late 20th century and threatened the early 21st century with conflagrations in many places, some of them remote and all of them complex, presenting mediators with tangles of ethnic, religious or racial passions.

Specifically, the committee mentioned his work in ending South African domination of Namibia, the former South-West Africa, from the 1970s to the late 1990s , and peace efforts in the Indonesian province of Aceh, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Central Asia, the Horn of Africa and, most recently, in Iraq.

- from the New York Times

Martti Ahtisaari was an AIESECer from Finland. How cool is that? Not only are we the only student organization with a seat in the United Nations, we have a Nobel laureate among us. Congratulations Mr. Ahtisaari!