Michael Fakhri

About/Bio

Michael Fakhri is the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and Associate Professor at the University of Oregon School of Law where he teaches in the areas of international economic law, commercial law, and food and agriculture. He is a faculty member of the Environmental and Natural Resource Program where he co-leads the Food Resiliency Project. His current research focuses on questions of food sovereignty, indigenous sovereignty, and agroecology - all in an effort work through legal accounts of imperialism, race, and capitalism. Professor Fakhri's other research interests include Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) and international legal history. He is the author of Sugar and the Making of International Trade Law (CUP 2014) and co-editor of Bandung, Global History, and International Law (CUP 2017).

Recently Published

International Law and the Right to Food: What We Can Learn from Racial Justice Movements

Until very recently, international law usually dealt with questions of race and racism through two primary mechanisms: denial and containment. On the one hand, the outlawing and criminalisation of the most egregious forms of racial discrimination contributed to the narrative that international law was the polar opposite and even the primary antagonist of racism, which was…

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Canada Avoids Indigenous Reconciliation and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

If you believe that Canada is a country filled with self-effacing and polite people, you may miss the genocidal violence within its borders. First Nations, Inuit, and Métis have always known that the Government of Canada along with the Canadian provincial governments have deliberately implemented and enabled the continuous annihilation of Indigenous peoples. The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered…

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FAO Secretary General Elections – Part 2: What is to be Done?

In this second post, I want to provide some more details about how the budget works within the FAO. My purpose is to highlight how the majority of Member nations wield political power, while top donors wield financial power. Today, to win the FAO, is to gain the authority to define the right to food…

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