Aya Burweila

Aya Burweila (@burweila) is an expert and public commentator on security with a special focus on Libya. She is the founder and director of the non-profit Code on the Road.

She is among the BBC Expert Women in terrorism and radicalization and a visiting lecturer at the Hellenic National Defense College. She is also the Ambassador and Special Envoy of the European Public Law Organization to Libya and North Africa. She is the former head of Research & Public Policy at Solidarity Now, an Athens-based NGO active nation-wide in the field of human rights.

Code on the Road is an award-winning NGO based in Greece and Jordan that focuses on delivering business and software education to women and youth and on researching factors that help build communities that are resilient to right wing or religious extremism.

Born in Benghazi, Libya, Aya holds a BA in Political Science from the University of La Verne, an MA in International Relations and Affairs from the University of Indianapolis, a certificate in Building Capacities on Arms Control in the MENA Region from the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, certificates in Conflict Analysis and Interfaith Conflict Resolution from the United States Institute of Peace, and a certificate in Terrorism Studies from the University of St. Andrews.

She has participated in projects and field visits to refugee camps in Germany, Italy, Lebanon and in Greece, where she also worked at the Leros island hotspot, a refugee camp designed as the initial reception point for refugees on the borders of the European Union.

For a decade Aya was also a Senior Analyst at the Research Institute for European and American Studies, where she specialized in extremism and conflict in North Africa, Europe, and the Balkans.

Aya’s work on integration, conflict and extremism has been published in a such platforms as the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, European Eye on Radicalization, the Oxford Law Society Journal, the China U.S. Focus Digest, the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies, and such mainstream publications as Huffington Post and Al Arabiya.

Aya is also the author of the European Union-commissioned Greece National Report 2018: Migrant and Youth Social Inclusion Through Entrepreneurship for the People for Change Foundation. She has been quoted by Time Magazine, Jane’s Military Intelligence Review, Voice of America, Infobae, The Washington Times, Al Monitor, The Guardian, Jeune Afrique, The National, Ta Nea, Protothema, Ahval, the Athens News and regularly appears on major broadcast networks such as Bloomberg/Asharq and GreekCurrent/Kathimerini to provide insights and commentary.

Awards for her proposal to empower women and girls in Greece and Jordan include the U.S. State Department’s Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund competition in 2018 which helped lead to the establishment of her NGO and the Harvard Arab Alumni Association’s 3rabi Impact initiative in 2019.

In 2010, Aya was the first Libyan to be invited as an individual to join the U.S. State Department’s premier professional exchange program, the International Visitor’s Leadership Program.