Olivier De Schutter

Olivier De Schutter is a Belgian legal scholar specialising in economic and social rights, with a specific focus on the role of social rights in the fight against poverty and their status in European integration: he coined the term "the Social Constitution of Europe" to describe the role of the European Social Charter on the European continent. 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 Louvain-la-Neuve, 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 Law's Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. He is the first chair of the Belgian Advisory Council on Policy Coherence for Development and he co-chairs the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), 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.