Profile

Edward Kwakwa is Senior Director, Department for Traditional Knowledge and Global Challenges, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva.  He served as General Counsel at World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) from 2004 until September 2016.  

Kwakwa holds an LL.B. degree from the University of Ghana, an LL.M. from Queen’s University in Canada, and an LL.M. and a J.S.D. from Yale Law School in the U.S.A.  

Before joining WIPO, Kwakwa practiced corporate and international trade law and investment with the law firm of O’Melveny and Myers in Washington, D.C., worked as International Legal Adviser at the Commission on Global Governance in Geneva, as Senior Legal Adviser at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and as Legal Affairs Officer at the World Trade Organization (WTO).  

His publications include four books and numerous articles on international law.

He is currently serving as Vice-President of the African Foundation for International Law, Member of the Governing Council of Africa Legal Aid and Member of the Editorial Advisory Boards of the African Journal of International and Comparative Law and the International Organizations Law Review.  

In September 2011, he was elected as an Associate Member of the Institut de Droit International, and became a full Member in September 2017.  He served from 2001 to 2004 on the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law (ASIL), from 2012 to 2015 as Counselor of the ASIL, and as Vice President of the ASIL from 2015 to 2017.  

He is a Visiting Professor of Law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, and at the University of Lausanne, and has been an Adjunct/Visiting Professor of Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the University of Denver College of Law, and the University of Pretoria, South Africa, where he has been appointed as an Extraordinary Professor in Law.