The son of a diplomat, his primary and high school education took place in Bombay (now Mumbai), India; Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; and Kigali, Rwanda.

His doctoral thesis, a comparative study of the role of courts in fundamental rights adjudication, was published in French as Fonction de juger et droits fondamentaux.

He also published extensively on economic globalization and human rights, most notably advocating in favor of improving linkages between trade policies and labour rights and environmental standards (Trade in the Service of Sustainable Development, Hart/Bloomsbury, 2015) and making proposals for a more sustainable and democratic governance of natural resources, such as land and water (Governing Access to Essential Resources, Columbia Univ.

In his work, he seeks to link the human rights principles of participation, accountability, and non-discrimination, with the idea of learning-based public policies, that are permanently tested and revised in the light of their impact on the poorest and most vulnerable.

His current work focuses on transition towards sustainable societies, in which he mobilizes various disciplines including economics, social psychology, political science, and feminist theory.

He also conducts official visits that lead to reports being prepared to the attention of the governments concerned and to the international community: such missions took place, inter alia, in Benin, Brazil, Cameroon, China, Guatemala, Madagascar, Mexico, Nicaragua, South Africa and Syria.

As Special Rapporteur he has released official reports on agroecology, nutrition, contract farming, fisheries, gender and other key issues tied to securing the right to food, and throughout has advocated the need for smallholder farmers to be at the centre of food security strategies,[5] and urged countries to reinvest in their agricultural sectors rather than rely on imports from volatile world markets.

De Schutter was featured in Marie-Monique Robin's 2012 documentary Crops of the Future, where his encouraging study of agro-ecology and the solutions to our planet's food crisis is presented.

The Committee meets for three sessions each year, receiving country reports and assessing individual communications under an Optional Protocol that entered into force in May 2013.

De Schutter maintained that he was "extremely troubled" by probable multibillion-pound spending cuts which may include reductions in welfare payments for millions of the poorest in the UK:"You do not impose austerity measures when the whole population is facing a cost of living crisis.