Christophe Golay

Christophe Golay is Senior Research Fellow and Strategic Adviser on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights at the Geneva Academy.

He is also Visiting Professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, and an external member of the Council of the Interdisciplinary Institute for Ethics and Human Rights at the University of Fribourg. In 2013 he was Visiting Fellow at the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism.

His expertise and publications relate to economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR), the right to food, access to justice for victims of human rights violations, human rights and development, the rights of peasants, the legal framework of humanitarian action, and the work of UN special procedures and treaty bodies.

Dr Golay is supervising the legal dimension of two research projects on the right to food in Bolivia, Cambodia, Ghana and Kenya, jointly funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

Since 2009 Dr Golay has been providing legal advice to a number of stakeholders in relation to the negotiation, adoption and implementation of the UN declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas. From 2001 to 2008 he was Legal Adviser to the first UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and undertook missions with the UN in Brazil, Guatemala, Bolivia, Cuba, Niger, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, India and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In that capacity, he participated in the definition of the right to food in international law and published two books, including his PhD dissertation, on the right to food and access to justice.

Dr Golay holds a PhD in International Relations (with a specialization in International Law) and a double Master’s in International Law and International Relations from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.