Former US President Jimmy Carter dies at 100

Former US President Jimmy Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has died at the age of 100, his charitable foundation announced Sunday.

The Carter Center said in a statement that the US president from 1977 to 1981 died peacefully at his home in Plains, Georgia, surrounded by his family.

Carter had been receiving hospice care since mid-February 2023 at his home in Plains, the small city where he was born and ran a peanut farm before becoming governor of Georgia and running for the White House.

“My father was a hero, not just to me, but to all who believe in peace, human rights and selfless love,” his son Chip Carter said in a statement.

Carter was the oldest living former US president and the longest-lived US president, something that seemed unlikely after the Democrat announced in 2015 that he had been diagnosed with a brain tumor.

The Navy veteran and devout Christian has repeatedly defied the odds and enjoyed a long and fruitful tenure after four years in the Oval Office that were often viewed as disappointing.

Carter was elected president in 1976 after the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal.

During his only presidential term, Carter worked to promote human rights and social justice, and had a strong first two years that saw him broker a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt called the Camp David Accords.

He founded the Carter Center in 1982 to pursue his vision of global diplomacy, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his tireless efforts to promote social and economic justice.

He has also monitored numerous elections around the world and emerged as an international mediator in cases ranging from North Korea to Bosnia.

His wife, Rosalyn, died on November 19, 2023, at the age of 96, after 77 years of marriage.

Carter’s marriage lasted the longest of any US president, surpassing that of former President George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara, which lasted 73 years.

Rosalynn met Jimmy Carter in 1945 when she was in college and he was on leave from the US Naval Academy in Annapolis.

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter married in 1946 and have been an inseparable couple ever since, both in public and private life.

In his nineties, Carter was diagnosed with brain cancer, but he recovered.

In his last days, he was unable to speak due to his health condition and moved around in a wheelchair.