Hilal Elver

Hilal Elver is an international law professor and the Co-director of the Climate Change, Human Security and Democracy project at the Orfalea Center, UC Santa Barbara, where she has been Distinguished Visiting Professor between 2002-2012. She has been the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Right to Food between 2014-2020. Currently, she is a member of the United Nations High Level Expert Panel (HLPE) of the Committee of the World Food Security (CFS), and since 2022 a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the UN Food Summit Hub. Until 2014 she was the members of the Turkish delegation at the UN Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC). She started her academic career at the University of Ankara Faculty of Law until she left in 1994. During this period, she was also appointed as a founding legal advisor of the Ministry of Environment, then the legal advisor and the General Director of the Directorate of Woman Status. Between 1994-1996 she was the UNEP Chair on Environmental Diplomacy at the Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies at the University of Malta. Since 1996 she has been visiting professor in various countries, predominantly in the United States. Her first book on Peaceful Uses of International Rivers: The Euphrates and Tigris Basin published in 2002 by the Transnational Publisher. Second book, Headscarf Controversy: Secularism and Freedom of Religion published by Oxford University Press in 2012. Her most recent co-edited book with Paul Wapner is Reimagining Climate Change published in 2016 by Routledge Press. She is currently working on a book titled “Transformation of Global Food System through Human Rights Approach.”