Finnish Statesman and Nobel Peace Prize Recipient. He gained international recognition after receiving the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize for, according to the Nobel Prize committee, "his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts." He was a major contributor when Namibia achieved independence from 1989 to 1990, arbitrated in Kosovo in 1999 and 2005 to 2007, and helped to bring the long-lasting conflict in the Aceh province in Indonesia to an end in 2005. As a member of the Social Democratic Party, he served as the 10th President of Finland from March 1, 1994 to March 1, 2000. He was displaced along with the rest of his family when his birthplace was ceded to the Soviet Union in 1940 after the Russo-Finnish War. His experience with war during childhood led him to make peace as an adult. The family moved first to Kuopio in south-central Finland and later northwest to Oulu. He served in the Finnish military at the rank of captain. After being discharged from the military, he went on to graduate from the University of Oulu in 1959 and, in the early 1960s, worked in Pakistan on an educational project for the Swedish Agency for International Development. In 1963, he studied economics at the Aalto University School of Business. He returned to Finland in the mid-1960s and joined the Foreign Affairs Ministry. He later served as his country's ambassador to various countries before joining the United Nations, where he served in various positions around the globe. In 1994, he became a candidate for the office of president of Finland and was successful in the election that year. He went on to serve in this position until stepping down in 2000. During his tenure as President, he, along with Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin, persuaded President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia to accept a peace plan as a condition of stopping punitive bombings by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). After leaving office, he served in several diplomatic roles in various areas of the world, including Northern Ireland, the West Bank, Indonesia, Kosovo, and Iraq. Besides the Nobel Peace Prize, he received numerous accolades from countries around the world, including the United States Freedom Medal and the J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding, both awarded in 2000. He married a childhood friend, and the couple has a son.