The Interdisciplinary Research Cell in Human Rights (CRIDHO) has been created within the Centre for Philosophy of Law (CPDR), an extra-department Institute of the University of Louvain, by scholars seeking to understand the development of fundamental rights by relying on other disciplines, especially economics and political philosophy.
The CRIDHO works on the relationship between market mechanisms and fundamental rights, both at the level of interindividual relationships as at the level of the relationships between States in the European or international context.
The hypothesis of the CRIDHO is that the conflict between the " freedom " of economic agents on the market, with the vulnerability this results in for the less well endowed agents, and the guarantee of fundamental rights, which could exclude the commodification of these rights, requires a reflection on the context in which the individual freedoms to contract and to exchange are exercised, and on the need to transform this context to enhance the autonomy of the individual. This hypothesis is tested on the different material questions which are investigated within the CRIDHO : internal market and competitive deregulation, respect for privacy in the sphere of employment, the need for an open method of coordination of fundamental rights policies in the European Union, freedom of contract and anti-discrimination law in the field of employment...
Olivier De Schutter, director of the CRIDHO, is holding since May 2020 the mandate of United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights: [www.ohchr.org]
From May 2008 to May 2014, he held the mandate of United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food: [www.srfood.org].
He is Co-chair of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems: [IPES-Food ].