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.

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.