Philip Alston

Philip Alston is an internationally renowned scholar in the field of human rights. He served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights from 2014 to 2020. In that capacity, Alston visited and reported on the United States, the United Kingdom, Chile, China, Mauritania, Romania, and Saudi Arabia, among other states. Prior to his appointment in 2014, Alston served as the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions. He has also been a member of the Group of Experts on Darfur appointed by the UN Human Rights Council; special adviser to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the Millennium Development Goals; chair of the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights; chair of the first meeting of the Presidents and Chairs of all of the international human rights courts and committees at the World Conference on Human Rights; UNICEF’s legal adviser for the drafting of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child; and a member of the Independent International Commission investigating human rights violations in Kyrgyzstan. Alston is John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at NYU Law School and chair of the NYU Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. He has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of International Law since 1996 and is the author of numerous publications, including the leading human rights casebook. He is widely cited for his breadth of understanding and vision of the history, contemporary challenges, and future of the field.