DeSchutter Named Special Rapporteur

 

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March 25, 2008 (NEW YORK) – Olivier De Schutter, Visiting Professor at Columbia Law School was appointed today as a United Nations Special Rapporteur. De Shutter’s human rights mandate is to monitor and report on the right to food.

 

He will report to the UN General Assembly and to the Human Rights Council on overcoming hunger at national and international levels. His work will also be to fulfill the first of the eight UN Millennium Development Goals adopted in 2000: to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger and halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by the year 2015. There are an estimated 854 million people suffering from hunger and another 2 billion people suffering from micronutrient deficiencies.

 

In addition to being a Visiting Professor at Columbia Law School, Olivier De Schutter is Professor of Human Rights at the University of Louvain, Belgium and at the College of Europe, Natolin (Warsaw). He has published extensively on international and human rights, particularly in combating discrimination in the European Union and has litigated a number of cases before the European Court of Human Rights.

 

Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, stands at the forefront of legal education and of the law in a global society. Columbia Law School joins traditional strengths in international and comparative law, constitutional law, administrative law, business law and human rights law with pioneering work in the areas of intellectual property, digital technology, sexuality and gender, and criminal law.