Prof. 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.^[1] He is a Professor of international human rights law, European Union law and legal theory at the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium, as well as at the College of Europe and at SciencesPo 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) [1], a group of experts from various disciplines and regions who work together towards developing proposals for food systems reform.

Before being appointed the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, De Schutter was the General Secretary of the International Federation for Human Rights, and international human rights non-governmental organisation based in Paris focused on the issue of globalization and human rights (2004–2008).

In 2013, Olivier De Schutter was awarded the prestigious Francqui Prize, in recognition of his contributions to the theory of governance, EU law, and international and European human rights law. The Prize was awarded by an international jury chaired by Harvard Professor E. Maskin, Nobel Laureate in Economics.