Augsburg College will hold its 15th annual Nobel Peace Prize Festival on Friday, March 5th.
The festival will honor Martti Ahtisaari, the former President of Finland and recipient of the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize. Ahtisaari will speak at the opening ceremony and the first session, titled “Striving for Peace, a Question of Will,” which will start on Friday at 7:30 p.m. in Melby Hall.
Ahtisaari will also speak at a forum called “A Deliberative Dialogue on the Role of Small States in Strategic Peacebuilding,” which will begin on Saturday, March 6th at 9 a.m., also in Melby Hall. He will be joined by Kjell Magne Bondevik, the former Prime Minister of Norway and founder of the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights.
The last session will feature Leymah Gbowee, whose struggle for peace in Liberia helped lead to the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as President of Liberia and the first female head of state in Africa. Gbowee is featured in the documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which will be screened at the festival.
Comment