Olivier de Schutter has been UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights since May 2020. He is a professor at UCLouvain and Sciences Po (Paris), and has taught in the past at the College of Europe (2008-2016), New York University (2004), Columbia University (2008-2013) and Yale University (2016-2017). He was a visiting professor at UC Berkeley in 2013-2014, where he helped found the Berkeley Food Institute. In 2013, he was the recipient of the prestigious Francqui Prize for his contribution to international human rights law and governance theory. An expert in economic and social rights, Olivier de Schutter was Secretary General of the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH) between 2004 and 2008. Appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food in 2008, succeeding Swiss sociologist Jean Ziegler, he held this position until 2014. Elected member of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 2015 and re-elected in 2019, he relinquished this position in order to accept the mandate of Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.
Since 2015, Olivier de Schutter has co-chaired the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), a group of high-level experts from different disciplines developing proposals on the reform of food systems, in particular to maximize the potential of agroecology. Olivier de Schutter has published extensively on economic and social rights, on the links between human rights and development, and on the conditions for ecological transition. He has published some twenty books. His most recent books are : The Poverty of Growth, prefaced by Kate Raworth (Pluto Press, 2024) ; with T. Dedeurwaerdere, Social Innovation in the Service of Ecological and Social Transformation. The Rise of the Enabling State (Routledge, 2021) Pour un État partenaire. L'innovation citoyenne au cœur de la transformation sociale et écologique (Etopia/Altura, 2024) ; Changer de boussole. La croissance ne vaincra pas la pauvreté (Les Liens qui Libèrent, May 2023) ; and with H. Frazer, A.-C.Guio and E. Marlier, The Escape from Poverty. Breaking the Vicious Cycles Perpetuating Disadvantage (Policy Press, 2023).