Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Excellencies,
Distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Dear Friends and Colleagues around the world,
I feel both humility and gratitude at receiving this year's Nobel Peace Prize. It is the greatest recognition anybody working in this field can be given.
What I am feeling now can only be compared with the joy I have felt when seeing the changes that peace has brought to the lives of people. When people, who have endured wars and crises, begin to build their lives in an atmosphere of peace - When faith in the future returns.
I too was a child affected by a war. I was only two years old when, as a result of an agreement on spheres of interest between Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union, war broke out, forcing my family to leave soon thereafter the town of Viipuri. Like several hundred thousand fellow Karelians, we became refugees in our own country as great power politics caused the borders of Finland to be redrawn and left my home town as part of the Soviet Union. This childhood experience contributed to my commitment to working on the resolution of conflicts. read it all |
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