A Board Member’s Perspective on the Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation
This year marks twenty-five years since President Martti Ahtisaari founded CMI, the organisation that now bears his name as CMI – Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation. Today it is recognised globally alongside a select few peer organisations as one of the world’s leading independent peace mediation organisations.
As a long-standing board member who has followed CMI’s path for well over a decade, I have witnessed this remarkable evolution from within. It is an appropriate moment to reflect on what makes this organisation unique – and why its work matters more than ever.
Beyond the Legacy
President Ahtisaari’s guiding conviction – that all conflicts can be resolved – remains the philosophical bedrock of CMI’s work. His belief in the power of dialogue, his pragmatic optimism, and his insistence on treating all parties with dignity continue to shape how CMI approaches even the most intractable conflicts.
Yet today, CMI is much more than a legacy organisation. It has become a global level expert institution. It is a place where over one hundred international professionals develop, test, and refine the craft of peacemaking. The organisation has been involved in more than fifty peace processes across the Middle East, Africa, Eurasia, and Asia. It has transformed from a predominantly Finnish organisation into a truly global one, in terms of its staff, its funding sources, and its prominence in the field.
Sustainable Peace, Not Performative Peacemaking
Achieving peace is not a simple task. Political will is essential, but so is principled negotiation and inclusive dialogue. The goal must always be sustainable peace, not what might be called performative peacemaking, where agreements are reached for appearances but lack the foundation to endure.
The context for this work grows ever more challenging. Fragmented geopolitics, rising militarisation, and deepening polarisation are reducing opportunities for dialogue. The diplomatic space is shrinking. CMI’s role is to help maintain and expand that space: to keep open the channels required for negotiation and de-escalation, even when the broader environment makes this increasingly difficult.
At the same time, peacemaking must evolve to meet new realities. Contemporary conflicts require updated tools and approaches. CMI advances new methods, strengthens inclusion, engages emerging actors, and integrates digital and data-driven practices into mediation support. This is not innovation for its own sake, but a recognition that the craft of peacemaking must adapt if it is to remain effective.
Inclusion as Foundation
Inclusion is needed because political will and commitment to peaceful futures must exist at various levels of society, not only among political elites. Research consistently shows that inclusive processes lead to more durable outcomes.
CMI has made inclusive mediation central to its identity. For over a decade, it has co-organised the UN High-Level Seminar on Gender and Inclusive Mediation Strategies, training hundreds of senior mediators in how to translate normative commitments into practical approaches. We’ve seen a shift in conversation, from ‘why inclusion?’ to ‘how do we achieve meaningful participation?’ This reflects real progress in the field, progress that CMI has helped drive.
Foresight and the Longer Horizon
Peace is often a matter of understanding the longer-term horizon. External factors, such as technological change, social transformation, economic shifts, environmental pressures, can either cause escalation or create new platforms for alignment. Foresight methodologies help conflicting parties step back from immediate grievances and consider shared futures.
More fundamentally, foresight enables the imagination of better, more peaceful futures among different groups and layers in societies. When parties to a conflict can align their expectations about what the future might hold, as well as what future they want to build together, the foundation for sustainable agreement becomes possible. CMI has pioneered future-oriented dialogue processes in contexts from Yemen to the South Caucasus, using participatory methods that help communities identify common ground that may not be visible in present-focused negotiations.
In the CMI Board
Supporting an organisation committed to peace is the most noble position one can find. I have had the opportunity to do this alongside a remarkable variety of people who share these values and aspirations: leading politicians, foreign policy experts, diplomats, senior business figures, philanthropist, legal scholars. The conversations around the board table have taught me much about the complexity of the world – and about the possibilities that exist even within that complexity.
How do I then contribute as a board member? My work and skills lie largely in understanding societal change: discovering opportunities for impact, building theories of change, and elaborating how to identify outcomes and impacts retroactively. CMI has provided a fruitful domain for practising these skills, given that peace mediation operates in the realm of the counterfactual: what violence was prevented, what trust was slowly built, what options were preserved for the future.
I am always interested in foresight and strategy. How do landscape-level external drivers open up new opportunities or close others? What are the critical factors and conditions for taking an organisation to the next level: talent, funding, reputation, access? What are the organisational and cultural features and virtues that enable successful implementation of a strategy? These questions, applied to an organisation working in contexts of conflict and fragility, have sharpened my thinking considerably.
Having been involved in numerous organisations and their boards, I appreciate highly sound governance practices. This means clear and transparent reporting between top management and the board. It means patient analysis of risks and uncertainties: What if some of the large funders abolish their funding programme? What if something happens to one of our staff members in a difficult context? What if our name is drawn into a public controversy? And most importantly: how do we secure that the organisation has qualified and motivated decision-makers in the future? These are the quiet responsibilities of the board that enable an organisation to fulfil its mission over the long term.
Through all of this, I have learned a great deal. About international relations and diplomacy, geopolitics, and about how to evaluate impact in processes that resist simple measurement. The CMI has developed sophisticated approaches to understanding its contribution even in contexts where success is partial, progress is non-linear, and outcomes depend on countless factors beyond any mediator’s control.
Most of all, I have witnessed an organisation growing into its potential. Yet it does not rest on past achievements. In a world with more state-based conflicts than at any time since 1946, the need for skilled, principled, independent peace mediation has never been greater.
Peace, as Ahtisaari often reminded us, is a question of will. CMI exists to support that will wherever it can be found – and to help build it where it does not yet exist.
