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Jimmy Carter, the 39th US president who later won the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, has died at the age of 100, the Carter Center said on Sunday.
He died peacefully on Sunday at his home in Plains, Georgia, surrounded by his family, the human rights organisation he founded said in a statement.
Carter was the longest-living president in US history, having celebrated his 100th birthday on October 1 this year.
His death came over a year after his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter, passed away in November 2023, and more than a year and a half after the ailing former president entered hospice care, in February 2023.
“My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and unselfish love,” Chip Carter, the former president’s son, said Sunday.
The announcement came just weeks before Donald Trump is due to begin his second term in the White House. The Carter Center said in October that Carter, a life-long Democrat, had cast his mail-in ballot for Kamala Harris, Trump’s opponent.
US President Joe Biden joined a flood of tributes, saying Carter “saved, lifted and changed the lives of people all across the globe”.
Trump said on his Truth Social platform that “the challenges Jimmy faced as President came at a pivotal time for our country and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans. For that, we all owe him a debt of gratitude.”
Carter’s presidency was marred by spiralling inflation and a hostage crisis in Iran. The Democrat lost re-election to Republican Ronald Reagan in a landslide in 1980.
In the decades after he left office, however, Carter won widespread admiration for his extensive humanitarian work at home and abroad. He founded the Carter Center, the influential pro-democracy and human rights organisation, and became one of the most prominent volunteers for Habitat for Humanity, the affordable housing charity.
Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 “for undertaking peace negotiations, campaigning for human rights and working for social welfare”.
Carter faded from public view in the years leading up to his death. He visited Washington in 2018 to attend the state funeral of George HW Bush and endorsed Biden for president in 2020 with an audio message that was played at the Democratic National Convention.
President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden visited the Carters at their home in 2021. The Bidens attended a memorial service for Rosalynn Carter, alongside the former president, at Emory University in Atlanta in November 2023.
The Carter Center said in February 2023 that “after a series of short hospital stays,” the former president had decided to forego medical treatment and enter hospice treatment at home. Carter had undergone cancer treatment and suffered several falls in recent years.
In May 2024, Jason Carter said his grandfather was “really physically limited” and “coming to the end”. He also nodded to the former president’s religious convictions, saying: “There’s a part of that faith journey that you only can live at the very end and I think he has been there in that space.”
After losing his re-election bid in 1980, Carter returned to a modest, two-bedroom ranch house in the small town of Plains, Georgia, where the local population is around 800 people, and he taught Sunday school at the local church well into his 90s.
Both the former president and his wife were born and raised in Plains.
Jimmy Carter will be buried in a private ceremony in the small town — about 150 miles south of Atlanta — after a state funeral in Washington and a public event in Atlanta, the Carter Center said Sunday.
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