By Audrey Williams

When Antti Pentikainen was early in his career as a peacemaking practitioner, his work assisting Nobel Peace Laureate and former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari took him to conflict zones and immersed him in mediation processes.

However, as he did this work, he began to notice that something wasn’t quite right.

“Although Ahtisaari was cautious of time, I saw that these processes in general drag on,” he told S-CAR News.

He noticed that these processes seemed unable to account for “the urgency of the pain people have,” and he realized that although people affected by conflict seem to know best what the problems are and how to fix them, they rarely have access to the mediation process.

This effort has reinforced to him that not only should communities affected by conflict be included in mediation processes, they should also be supported in healing and dealing with the issues that have separated them from each other.

According to Pentikainen, the current lack of healing in conflict-affected communities contributes to the fragility of peace agreements and leads to the continuation of violence.

In short, getting to peace is one hurdle, but sustaining it is quite another….

Just as the search for how to support sustainable peace processes led Pentikainen to convene the Network, it has now brought him to the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, where he will serve as the founding executive director of the Mary Hoch Center for Reconciliation.