Philip Alston is Professor of Law at New York University Law School. He founded the NYU Center for Human Rights and Global Justice in 2002. He has also taught at Harvard Law School, the Australian National University, the European University Institute and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. In addition to his academic activities, he has held various United Nations posts including as UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights (2014-2020); UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions (2004-10), Chairperson of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1991-98), Independent Expert on reform of the UN human rights treaty body system (1989-97), and Special Advisor to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the Millennium Development Goals (2004-07). During and after the drafting of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, he was the external legal adviser to UNICEF. He has also been a member of the UN Security Council Commission of Inquiry on the Central African Republic, of the Independent International Commission on Kyrgyzstan, and of UN Group of Experts on Darfur (2007).
He has written extensively on a wide range of issues of international law and human rights, including the latest edition of a textbook entitled International Human Rights which is now available free of charge online. He was Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of International Law for eleven years and holds honorary doctorates from universities in Australia, Argentina, and the Netherlands. He was a founding member of the Board of Directors of Physicians for Human Rights until 1989.