The right to food, and its variations, is a human right protecting the right for people to feed themselves in dignity, implying that sufficient food is available, that people have the means to access it, and that it adequately meets the individual's dietary needs. The right to food protects the right of all human beings to be free from hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition.

The right is derived from the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which has 160 state parties as of May 2012. States that have signed the covenant agreed to take steps to the maximum of their available resources to achieve progressively the full realization of the right to adequate food, both nationally and internationally.

At the 1996 World Food Summit, governments reaffirmed the right to food and committed themselves to half the number of hungry and malnourished to 420 million by 2015. However, the number has increased over the past years, reaching an infamous record in 2009 of more than 1 billion undernourished people worldwide.

Mary Therese Winifred Robinson (née Bourke) (Irish: Máire Mhic Róibín; born 21 May 1944) served as the seventh, and first female, President of Ireland from 1990 to 1997, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, from 1997 to 2002. She first rose to prominence as an academic, barrister, campaigner and member of the Irish Senate (1969–1989). She defeated Fianna Fáil's Brian Lenihan and Fine Gael's Austin Currie in the 1990 presidential election becoming, as an Independent candidate nominated by the Labour Party, the Workers' Party and independent senators, the first elected president in the office's history not to have had the support of Fianna Fáil.

She is widely regarded as a transformative figure in the presidency of Ireland, who revitalised and liberalised a previously conservative, low-profile political office. She resigned the presidency two months ahead of the end of her term of office to take up her post in the United Nations. Robinson has been Honorary President of Oxfam International since 2002 and of the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation EIUC since 2005, she is Chair of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and is also a founding member and Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders. Robinson was a member of the European members of the Trilateral Commission.

Olivier De Schutter is a legal academic and human rights expert. A Harvard graduate now resident in Belgium, he was appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food by the Human Rights Council in March 2008 and assumed his functions on 1 May 2008. He still teaches 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. He is also a visiting professor at Columbia University. Additionally, he is a visiting scholar (2010-2012)at American University Washington College of Law's Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law.

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 Université catholique de Louvain and at Harvard University, before obtaining a Ph.D. from Louvain-la-Neuve. His doctoral thesis 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, published by Cambridge University Press in 2010. In his work, he seeks to link the human rights principles of participation, accountability, and non-discrimination, with the idea of learning-based public policies, that are permanently tested and revised in the light of their impact on the poorest and most vulnerable.

Dr. David Nabarro (born in London on August 26, 1949), studied at Oxford and London Universities and qualified as a physician in 1973. Dr. Nabarro worked as the Senior UN System Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza at United Nations Headquarters in New York. He has been seconded to this position from the World Health Organization.

In September 2005, Dr. Nabarro joined the office of the UN Secretary General as Senior Coordinator for Avian and Pandemic Influenza.

In January 2009 he was given the additional responsibility of coordinating the UN system’s High Level Task Force on the Global Food Security and was appointed, in October, Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Food Security and Nutrition.

Son of Sir Gerald David Nunes Nabarro, he attended Oundle School leaving in the summer of 1966. In a gap year between school and university, Nabarro was a Community Service Volunteer. He spent a year as the Organiser of Youth Action, York. A BBC television documentary was made about his volunteer work.