His work after the White House made Jimmy Carter a standout

Jimmy Carter’s post-presidency lasted more than 43 years - the longest of any former commander in chief by more than a decade. But it’s what he packed into those years that probably set him apart for all time.

Whether he was building houses for the poor in the United States and abroad, monitoring elections in some of the world’s most turbulent, troubled countries or tackling the eradication of a tropical disease that once afflicted millions of people, Carter lived his convictions.

“We have an ethical obligation … to prevent suffering wherever we can,” he told the U.K. Parliament in 2016, a simple declaration that came as close as any to exemplifying his efforts after the White House.

Carter earned international admiration, and occasional criticism, for the unique role he forged. The sweep of his work is striking. So, too, is the humanity at its core.

Launch of a new legacy

Just months after departing Washington, the 39th president founded the Carter Center in his native state of Georgia. Its mission - “Waging Peace. Fighting Disease. Building Hope.” - would serve as a road map for the projects and challenges that he took on in the years that followed. At a certain point, they became inseparable from the man himself.

4,390 homes on four continents

Carter was a volunteer extraordinaire for Habitat for Humanity, helping the international nonprofit build, renovate or repair thousands of homes for the poor. His commitment and that of his wife, Rosalynn, was so unwavering that for more than 35 years both gave one week a year to the organization - drawing tens of thousands of other volunteers to what was dubbed the Carter Work Project.

“I have learned that our greatest blessings come when we are able to improve the lives of others,” he once told Habitat, “and this is especially true when those others are desperately poor or in need.”

Carter’s first Habitat site was less than a dozen miles from his own home in Plains, Ga. His last site was in Nashville in 2019, and he carried on, electric drill in hand, despite a black eye and stitches suffered in a fall the day before.

In between, he was part of house-raising projects across the United States and around the globe. Habitat’s final tally for him: 4,390 homes in 14 countries in North America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa and Asia.

The Guinea worm, defeated

It will stand as a singular, first-time achievement: wiping out a disease without a vaccine or medicine. And it will happen, perhaps as early as this year, because of an international collaboration led by the Carter Center that targeted the painful, disabling illness caused by the Guinea worm.

Contracted when a person drinks water contaminated with the parasite’s larvae, Guinea worm disease once was widespread and intractable, afflicting more than 3 million people annually in Africa and Asia.

In 2023, only 14 cases were reported.

Credit goes to a sustained health education campaign. Carter became so linked to the effort that on one trip to Nigeria he was greeted by a sign made by schoolchildren: “Watch out Guinea worm, here comes Jimmy Carter.”

Even while fighting the Guinea worm, Carter and the center also focused with their partners on other tropical scourges: Onchocerciasis, more commonly known as river blindness and spread by black flies. Trachoma, another threat to vision. Schistosomiasis, or “snail fever,” which attacks internal organs. And lymphatic filariasis, a debilitating conspiracy of mosquitoes and worms that lodges in a person’s lymphatic system.

In a 2016 speech, Carter explained what kept him going despite the often daunting odds.

“In those moments when I do get frustrated … I am cheered by the knowledge that there are mothers in Colombia and Ecuador and Mexico and Guatemala that never have to worry again about their families going blind from river blindness. I have to remember that there are women in Ethiopia who will never suffer from the ravages of blinding trachoma. There are millions of people in Plateau and Nasarawa States in Nigeria no longer exposed to lymphatic filariasis. And I have to remember that there will soon be no Guinea worm anywhere in the world.

“I think of these realities, and I am energized again.”

A witness for democracy

As far-roaming as Carter’s travels were while building houses or battling diseases, they were eclipsed by his role as an elections monitor - invited by officials in countries where democratic voting was either threatened or nascent.

Carter made clear his pull-no-punches independence from the start, witnessing Panama’s 1989 presidential election and then denouncing it as fraudulent.

The following year, he was watching in Nicaragua. He noted the historic outcome: " … for the first time in the world, a revolutionary regime that came to power through armed struggle turned over control of the government to its adversaries as a result of voters’ choice.”

He ultimately observed 37 more elections, from Peru to Mozambique to Nepal and Indonesia. His final mission, at age 90, was to Guyana in 2015.

‘Citizen of a troubled world’

Peacemaker. Carter earned that label the hard way.

The year 1994 was particularly challenging: In North Korea, he defused a brewing crisis over its nuclear weapons program (though his intervention caused consternation and controversy back home). In Haiti, he helped to end a showdown with the government’s military leaders and avert a U.S. invasion. Then, just days before Christmas, he flew to the Balkans and negotiated a four-month cease-fire in the Bosnian War - a ethnically driven conflict that had already killed tens of thousands of people and displaced many times more.

Eight years later, Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the sweep of his work both in and out of office.

“I am not here as a public official,” he explained in accepting the award, “but as a citizen of a troubled world who finds hope in a growing consensus that the generally accepted goals of society are peace, freedom, human rights, environmental quality, the alleviation of suffering, and the rule of law.”

Epilogue

Amid the flood of tributes for what Carter accomplished after leaving the Oval Office, there is his own assessment from several years ago of what he and Rosalynn had decided to do.

“We go where we wish, we meet with whom we choose and we say what we believe. So you see, it’s a very wonderful life.”

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Gillian Brockell, Dee Swann and Stephen Cook contributed to this report.