Hilal Elver is a research professor at the University of California Santa Barbara since 2002, and the co-director of the Global Climate Change, Human Security, and Democracy Project, as well as a distinguished global fellow at the UCLA Law School, Resnick Food Law and Policy programme. Between 2014–2020, she was the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. Until 2014, she was a member of the Türkiye’s official delegation at the UN Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC). She has a law degree, a PhD from the University of Ankara Faculty of Law, and a doctoral degree in Juridical Studies (SJD) from the UCLA School of Law.

She started her teaching career at the University of Ankara Faculty of Law. During this period, she was appointed by the Turkish Government as the founding legal advisor of the Ministry of Environment, later became the General Director of Women’s Status. In 1994, she was appointed to the UNEP Chair in Environmental Diplomacy at the Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies in Malta. Since 1996 she has been teaching public international law, environmental law and human rights at various universities, mostly in the United States of America. Throughout her career she has been working with various International Institution and NGOs, and has been globally active as scholar and public speaker. Her academic publications have focused on global justice, human rights, women’s rights, right to food/water and food security, climate change, and environmental law. As the Special Rapporteur, her priorities were climate change, women empowerment, nutrition and sustainable diet, food systems workers rights, famine and war and disasters. Her reports and professional activities can be found at hilalelver.org.

She has been a member of the Steering Committee of the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE-FSN) of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) since October 2021.

She is a national of Türkiye and the United States of America.