How can maritime security benefit from mediation support?

This was the key question we explored at a roundtable in Brussels that I had the pleasure to chair. The event was organized by CMI — Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation as part of the EU’s annual Community of Practice on Peace Mediation flagship event, 20.1.0.2026. My fellow panelists were Alison Weston, Amnah Ibraheem, Dr. Dania Thafer, and Philipp Hermes.

Key takeaways:

As tensions in regional seas are rising, ranging from the Red Sea, Black Sea, Eastern Mediterranean, and South China Sea to the more recent crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, more efforts are needed to strengthen mutual understanding around responsible behaviour at sea.

Several peace mediation actors are already heavily involved in assisting states and other actors to find common ground. The discussions around the Code of Conduct for the South China Sea, the Black Sea Grain Initiative, and mediation in Yemen are examples.

The mediation community often works with different concepts and vocabularies, yet many initiatives in maritime security, such as information sharing and maritime domain awareness, maritime security dialogues and forums, or joint exercises, closely mirror classical tools in mediation and confidence building.

A key challenge is how to safeguard technical work around marine safety, incident management, and environmental protection from political interference, while at the same time building on technical achievements to strengthen political trust.

There is much work to do for the mediation community, in particular beyond the headlines. There is a growing number of simmering maritime inter-state disputes, we need stronger norms for rising security challenges, regional mechanisms such as regional seas conventions can benefit from assistance, and civilians at sea, including seafarers and fisherfolk, require better protection.

The EU has strong portfolio of capacity building and diplomatic action on maritime security, in particular in the Western Indian Ocean, Red Sea and Gulf of Guinea, which could benefit from considering as mediation and peace making in a more straightforward way.