Hilal Elver is a global leader and expert in international human rights law and international environmental law.
From May 2014 to April 2020, Elver served as the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, responsible for carrying out the right-to-food mandate as prescribed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. She is currently serving as an appointed member of the Steering Committee of the High-Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) on food security and nutrition and maintains several affiliations with academic institutions worldwide.
In addition to being one of the foremost independent experts on the human right to food, Hilal Elver has cultivated a dynamic portfolio career working with several international institutions, national governments, and local NGOs, and contributing to the academic community at large.
She worked with the Turkish government as the Founding Legal Advisor of Turkey’s Ministry of Environment from 1989 to 1991; the Director of the Environmental Law and Human Rights Committee of the EU Harmonization Committee: Office of the Prime Minister and State Planning Organization from 1989 to 1999; and member and legal advisor of Turkey’s team UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), from 2009- 2014). Hilal Elver has continued to strengthen her contributions to Turkey’s environmental and food-focused policy agenda in recent years.
Following her appointment as Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Hilal Elver has maintained her high standing in the international community, serving as a “Champion” for the UN Food Systems Summit 2021, and informing the direction of the Committee on World Food Security through her HLPE appointment.
Hilal Elver regularly advocates for human rights-based approaches to food system challenges and uses her platform to highlight the intersectionality of climate change, humanitarian assistance, gender, nutrition, food crises, famine, the Sustainable Development Goals, food system workers, fisheries, and corporate capture–issues that she regularly addressed in her mandate reports.
She has authored/edited several books, including Peaceful Uses of International Rivers: The Euphrates and Tigris Transboundary River Basins (2002); Headscarf Controversy: Secularism and Freedom of Religion (2012); and Reimagining Climate Change (ed. w/ Paul Wapner) (2016).
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