Michael Fakhri is the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (his thematic reports can be found here)
He teaches in the areas of international economic law, commercial law, and food law. His research focuses on the right to food and agroecology. His theoretical agenda involves investigating law’s role in imperial and capitalist adventures. He is a faculty member of the Environmental and Natural Resource Law Center where he co-leads the Food Resiliency Project.
He has delivered lectures and moderated public conversations on international human rights and development topics at universities in places such as South Africa, Egypt, Lebanon, Qatar, Singapore, Italy, Switzerland, Iceland, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Fakhri has been invited to give talks on human rights and development by peasant unions, labor unions, and human rights activists all over the world, and at international organizations such as the WTO Ministerial Conference. He has appeared before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and been cited by the International Court of Justice.
Professor Fakhri has also delivered talks at Yale University, Harvard Law School, Princeton University, Brown University, Cornell University, London School of Economics, University of Cambridge, the American University of Beirut, and the American University in Cairo.
Professor Fakhri received his doctorate from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, LL.M. from Harvard Law School, LL.B. from Queen's University, and B.Sc. in biology from the University of Western Ontario. Prior to pursuing graduate studies, he began his legal career with one of Canada's leading business law firms, later shifting to a practice in social justice advocacy.
UN Reports
“The right to food and the coronavirus disease pandemic” UN General Assembly (A/77/177) (18 July 2022)
“Seeds, Right to Life and Farmers’ Rights” UN Human Rights Council (A/HRC/49/43) (30 December 2021)
“Food Systems and Human Rights” UN General Assembly (A/76/237) (27 July 2021)
“The Right to Food in the Context of International Trade Law and Policy” UN General Assembly (A/75/219) (22 July 2021)
“Vision for the Right to Food Mandate” UN Human Rights Council (A/HRC/46/33) (24 December 2020)
Books
Bandung, Global History and International Law: Critical Pasts and Pending Futures, co-edited with Vasuki Nesiah and Luis Eslava (Cambridge University Press, 2017; paperback 2018)
Sugar and the Making of International Trade Law (Cambridge University Press 2014)
Articles
“Markets, Sovereignty, and Racialization” 25:2 Journal of International Economic Law 242 (2022)
“How the WTO Constructed Inuit and Indigenous Identity in EC-Seal Products” in John Borrows and Risa Schwartz (eds.), Indigenous Peoples and International Trade: Building an Equitable and Inclusive International Trade and Investment Agreement (Cambridge University Press, 2020) (with Madeleine Redfern)
"A History of Food Security and Agriculture in International Trade Law, 1945–2017” in J. D. Haskell and A. Rasulov (eds.), New Voices and New Perspectives in International Economic Law. European Yearbook of International Economic Law (Spring 2020) 55
“Sugar” in Jessie Hohmann and Daniel Joyce (eds.), International Law’s Objects (Oxford University Press 2019) 478
“Third World Sovereignty, Indigenous Sovereignty, and Food Sovereignty” 9 Transnational Legal Theory 218 (2018)
“The Spirit of Bandung” in Bandung, Global History and International Law: Critical Pasts and Pending Futures (Cambridge University Press 2017) 3 (co-author with Vasuki Nesiah and Luis Eslava)
“Gauging US and EU Seal Regimes in the Arctic Against Inuit Sovereignty” in Nengye Liu et al. (eds.), The European Union and the Arctic (Brill Nijhoff 2017) 200
“Food as a Matter of Global Governance” 11 Journal of International Law and International Relations 68 (2015)
“Globalizations of Law From the Perspective of International Trade Law (and Agricultural Commodities)” 1 Jindal Law Review 18 (2015)
“The Institutionalisation of Free Trade and Empire: A Study of the 1902 Brussels Convention” 2:1 London Review of International Law 49 (2014)
“Reconstruing WTO Legitimacy Debates” 2:1 Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law 64 (2011)
“The 1937 International Sugar Agreement: Neo-Colonial Cuba and Economic Aspects of the League of Nations” 24:4 Leiden Journal of International Law 89 (2011)
“Images of the Arab World and Middle East, Debates About Development and Regional Integration” 28:3 Wisconsin International Law Journal 390 (2011)
“Law as the Interplay of Ideas, Institutions, and Interests: Using Polanyi (and Foucault) to Ask TWAIL Questions” 10:4 International Community Law Review 455 (2008)
Essays, Reviews, Reference Entries
“The Food System Summit’s Disconnection from People’s Real Needs" 35:3 Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Article:16 (2022)
“A Trade Agenda for the Right to Food” 64 Development 212 (2021)
“International Commodity Agreements” in Koen De Feyter, Gamze Erdem Türkelli, Stéphanie De Moerloose (eds.), Law and Development Encyclopedia (Routledge 2020)
“Agriculture” in Mariana Valverde, Kamari Clarke, Eve Darian-Smith, Prabha Kotiswaran (eds.), Routledge Handbook on Law and Society (eds.) (2020) (co-author with Amy J. Cohen and Matthew Canfield)
“The Bandung Conference” in Tony Carty (ed.), Oxford Bibliographies in International Law (Oxford University Press 2017) (co-author with Kelly Reynolds)
“The WTO, Self-Determination, and Multi-Jurisdictional Sovereignty” 108 American Journal of International Law Unbound 287 (2015)
Book review of Kate Miles, The Origins of International Investment Law: Empire, Environment, and the Safeguarding of Capital, 18:3 Journal of International Economic Law 697 (2015)
“The Intersection Between Food Sovereignty and Law” 28:2 Natural Resources & Environment 45 (2013) (with Nate Bellinger)
“Questioning TWAIL’s Agenda” 14:1 Oregon Review of International Law 1 (2012)
Book review of Andrew Lang, World Trade Law after Neoliberalism. Re-imagining the Global Economic Order, 23:3 European Journal of International Law 901 (2012)
Food Policy, International Economic Law, Commercial Law, Urban Farming, TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law)