Olivier De Schutter

Olivier De Schutter born 20 July 1968 is a Belgian legal scholar specialising in economic and social rights He served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food from 2008 to 2014 He is a Professor of international human rights law European Union law and legal theory at the University of Louvain UCLouvain in LouvainlaNeuve Belgium as well as at the College of Europe and at Sciences Po in Paris He was a regular visiting professor at Columbia University between 2008 and 2012 and has regularly contributed to the American University Washington College of Laws Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law He is the first chair of the Belgian Advisory Council on Policy Coherence for Development and he cochairs the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems IPESFood a group of experts from various disciplines and regions who work together towards developing proposals for food systems reform A Member of the UN Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights between 2015 and 2020 he was appointed the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights and took up his functions on May 1 2020 The son of a diplomat his primary and high school education took place in Bombay now Mumbai India Jeddah Saudi Arabia and Kigali Rwanda He studied law at the University of Louvain UCLouvain PanthéonAssas University and Harvard University before obtaining a PhD from the UCLouvain His doctoral thesis a comparative study of the role of courts in fundamental rights adjudication was published in French as Fonction de juger et droits fondamentaux Transformation du contrôle juridictionnel dans les ordres juridiques américain et européens Bruxelles Bruylant 1999 1164 pp His subsequent publications are in the areas of governance and human rights with a particular focus on the issue of globalization and human rights and economic and social rights more generally and on the protection of fundamental rights in the European Union Among his books on human rights are International Human Rights Law Cases Materials Commentary initially published by Cambridge University Press in 2010 and which went through a second and third revised editions in 2014 and 2019 He also published extensively on economic globalization and human rights most notably advocating in favor of improving linkages between trade policies and labour rights and environmental standards Trade in the Service of Sustainable Development HartBloomsbury 2015 and making proposals for a more sustainable and democratic governance of natural resources such as land and water Governing Access to Essential Resources Columbia Univ Press 2016 coedited with K Pistor and Foreign Direct Investment and Human Development Routledge 2012 coedited with JF Swinnen and J Wouters Source Article Olivier De Schutter from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30