Emmanuel Nii Akwei Addo


Emmanuel Nii Akwei Addo was a Ghanaian lawyer and judge. He was a former Solicitor-General at the Attorney-General's department and Ministry of Justice and in this position was Administrative head of the legal Service of Ghana.
He has been director of the International Law Division of the Attorney-General's Department and the Ministry of Justice of Ghana. He is a former member of the International Law Commission of the United Nations; forty-ninth session to fifty-eighth session. He was the United Nations independent expert on the situation of human rights in the Sudan.

Early life and education

Addo was born on 10 September 1943 in Accra to Emmanuel Addoquaye Addo and Rose Finola Addo.
He had his elementary education at
the Methodist Primary School, Koforidua and Government Boys School, Kumasi from 1949 to 1957. He attended Accra Academy from 1958 to 1962 and continued for his sixth form course at Mfantsipim School from 1962 to 1964. In 1965, he entered the University of Ghana where he studied for his law degree, graduating in 1968. He passed the Ghana School of Law exams and was called to the Ghanaian Bar in 1969. He studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge for his master's degree in Public International Law from 1977 to 1978.

Career

In 1970 he joined the Attorney-General's Office in Accra and in the same year posted to the Attorney-General's Office in Ho in the Volta Region of Ghana. In 1973 he was put in charge of the Attorney General's Office and headed the office for the next seven years. From 1979 to 1989 he was the Regional Representative of the Attorney General's Office in Tamale in the Northern Region of Ghana. He was a member of the reconciliation committee of the Yendi Skin Affairs set up in 1987, by the then PNDC government to implement the Supreme Court Judgement on the Yendi Skin Dispute. In 1989 he was promoted Chief State Attorney and was seconded to the Ghanaian Foreign Affairs Ministry as Director of the Legal and Consular Bureau and worked as Legal Advisor to the Foreign Ministry of Ghana from 1989 to 1998. From this position, he served on the sixth legal committee of the U.N. General Assembly. From 1997 to 2006 he was an elected member of the International Law Commission.