Personal Life
Pacolli was married to Anna Oxa, an Italian-Albanian singer, from 1999 to 2002. At present he is married to Russian Maria (Masha) Pacolli (née Sichkova) and is the father of a son and four daughters.
In 2004, three United Nations workers were taken hostage in Kabul, Annette Flannigan, Angelito Nayan and Shqipe Hebibi, who was from Kosovo and had neither representation nor support from the outside. Behgjet Pacolli traveled to Afghanistan for one month of intensive personal work and negotiations on their behalf and has been credited with securing their release. It was two years later that the whole story repeated itself when the Italian citizen, Gabrielle Torsello was kidnapped in Afghanistan. Behgjet Pacolli was contacted by the Italian services in order to negotiate her liberation and was successful in doing so.
In 1993, Pacolli established "Les Enfants du Sakha", a fund with the stated goal of providing help in the medical care, education and recreation of children.
Since the end of the war, Pacolli has set up in Lugano, the Foundation for the Organisation and Reconstruction of Kosovo (FORK), through which he has been channelling aid to the province. Pacolli has employed several thousand Kosovar Albanians in projects across the world, as well as building houses, providing food, and opening schools for famililes.
Pacolli’s humanitarian foundation “Behgjet Pacolli” has constructed and furnished the American University in Kosovo, in Pristina. and now students from around the world attend including the ones from Kosovo.
Pacolli also financially supports the SEED Foundation (South East European Development) and is an international councillor of the CSIS (Centre for Strategic and International Studies).
On July 2010, International Union for Peace honoured the president of AKR (New Kosovo Alliance), Mr. Behgjet Pacolli with the special price "Cavaliere della Pace", (Cavalier of Peace). Mr. Pacolli is well known for his humanitarian activities during the last decades toward the people not only in Kosovo, but also around the world.
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“A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)