Nikhil Acharya

Nikhil Acharya is a Fellow at UNIDIR’s Conventional Arms and Ammunition Programme. As an Arms Expert on the UN Security Council’s Panel of Experts, Nikhil led investigations to document, analyze, trace and disrupt illicit weapons, ammunition, improvised explosive devices and unmanned aerial system supply chains to designated terrorist armed groups and sanctioned entities in Somalia, including Al-Shabaab and Islamic State.

Based in Sudan and Kenya since 2012, Nikhil has been embedded within regional and national arms control organizations in East Africa, the Great Lakes and the Sahel as a Senior Regional Advisor at the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies. He has worked closely with the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States, the Regional Centre on Small Arms and Light Weapons, and national arms control and disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) commissions, particularly in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia and South Sudan. In these roles, he has worked to enhance cross-border arms control, counter diversion and strengthen subregional cooperation.

From 2007 to 2012, Nikhil worked at UNIDIR on conventional weapons control. As UNIDIR’s DDR Focal Point, he helped design effective, evidence-based approaches to community security and small arms control with specialized UN agencies including the Inter-Agency Working Group on Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration, the United Nations Development Programme’s Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs’ Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Nepal.

Nikhil’s areas of expertise and publications cover weapons and ammunition management; arms tracing and documentation; monitoring UN arms embargoes, illicit arms trade networks and evolving battlefield technologies; operationalizing arms transfer controls and verification in conflict-affected environments; counter-trafficking of conflict resources and wildlife; and professional documentary photography.