Emmanuel Kwesi Aning

Prof. Kwesi Aning is the Head of the Office of International Cooperation, Office of the Commandant, Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, Ghana and clinical professor of peacekeeping practice at Kennesaw State University, Atlanta. He holds a doctorate in political science from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark in 1998 and a BA (Hons) in history from the University of Ghana in 1986. He served with the African Union from 2005 to 2007 as the first continental expert on the Common African Defence and Security Policy (CADSP) and counter-terrorism located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In 2006, he was appointed as the first independent evaluator of the UN’s Global Programme on Strengthening the Legal Regime against Terrorism. In 2014, he again wrote (together with Peter Allen) the second evaluation report on the UN's Global Report. In 2015, he was appointed by the UN secretary general to serve as a member of his advisory group to the Peacebuilding Fund. In 2021, he was appointed as a senior consultant for the independent project evaluation on support to the Maldives on counter-terrorism, and again in 2022 evaluated the European Union’s (EU) counter-terrorism interventions in Sri Lanka. In 2022, he was appointed to serve on the World Food Programs’ (WFP) security advisory board (SECAB). In 2023, he served as an evaluation expert on terrorism prevention for the independent evaluation section (IES) of the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC). His research focuses on peacekeeping, hybrid political orders, political violence, criminal networks, extremism and security force assistance. In March 2023, his 2022 article on ‘African experiences and alternativity in international relations theorizing about security’, in the Journal International Affairs, Vol. 98, No. 1 (with Kwaku Danso) won the International Affairs Centenary Prize by Chatham House, UK.