Jay Bahadur is an independent researcher and investigator based in Nairobi. From 2015 to 2019, he served as a UN Security Council sanctions monitor covering Somalia and Eritrea. His areas of focus included the Islamist militant groups Al-Shabaab and the Islamic State, maritime arms-smuggling networks, piracy, and the oil and gas sector. He has since authored several research reports for the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, primarily focused on the trafficking of arms from Iran to Yemen and onwards into the Horn of Africa. Bahadur is also the author of the 2011 book The Pirates of Somalia.