1/ Today marks the end of my 6-year term as UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty & human rights. In that time, I carried out 11 country visits & wrote 12 thematic reports on issues such as climate change, inequality & privatization. They are online at srpoverty.org 
I’ve been deeply inspired by the work of civil society organizations, activists, academics, and many others who have made all of this possible, and I have learned a tremendous amount from the rights-holders who have shared their time and insights with me.
There is no doubt in my mind that the UN Special Procedures system is of fundamental importance. Enabling independent experts to conduct fact-finding at the national level and empowering analyses of different themes contributes enormously to the richness of public discourse.
For many reasons, these are particularly fraught times, and there is little doubt that the system will come under increasing pressure as governments invoke a range of often highly dubious justifications to hobble democracy, subvert the rule of law, and minimize civic space.
Special Rapporteurs, Working Groups, Treaty Bodies and others will need to exercise special vigilance as well as show courage, determination, and creativity if they are to withstand these pressures and fight for the respect of fundamental human rights.
For my part, whatever accomplishments my mandate has achieved over the past six years have been due in very large part to the extraordinary caliber of the key people with whom I have had the privilege of working.
Alongside Patricia Varela & others at OHCHR, I want to single out Junko Tadaki who worked with me for almost the entire mandate with extraordinary knowledge, dedication, initiative & above all wisdom. She is the embodiment of what a UN official should be & I owe her a huge debt.
I have also been hugely blessed by the quality of my collaborators at @NYULaw. @CpjvanVeen was my trusted senior adviser from the outset and brought amazing insight, skills, hard work and a deep commitment to human rights to bear upon all that he did.
I am thrilled to be able to continue being his colleague now that he is directing a path-breaking project on the digital welfare state and human rights, based at @NYULaw: chrgj.org/focus-areas/di…
For the past two years @Bassam_Khawaja and @Rebecca_Riddell have contributed immensely to every aspect of the mandate, bringing a powerful commitment, deep professional knowledge, and sheer determination to move forward poverty elimination as an integral part of human rights.
I am thrilled to announce they will be co-directing the new Human Rights & Privatization Project at @HumanRightsNYU, expanding on work we’ve done in the mandate examining the relationship between the private sector, the state & human rights. Updates here: chrgj.us8.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=6c…
Many others have also made important contributions, including especially @AnnaMBulman whose contributions made a big difference, as well as my colleagues at the @humanrightsnyu, including Brianne Cuffe, Katie Wightman, and @stackpoole_.
Finally, although she would not want me to say it, nothing I did in relation to this mandate would have been possible without the sage advice and unflagging support of Professor Gráinne de Búrca.
The excellent news for the future is that the mandate is in the best possible hands going forward. From a range of highly-qualified candidates, the Human Rights Council appointed @DeSchutterO, a Professor at UCLouvain and SciencesPo, to succeed me.
He brings immense expertise to the role, having previously served with great success as Special Rapporteur on the right to food, and making a huge contribution in his most recent role as a member of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
He will be taking responsibility for the mandate’s external website srpoverty.org and we will be collaborating together with @CpjvanVeen on a report on aspects of the digital welfare state in Africa, which was begun some months ago and will be completed later this year.
For my part, I will continue to serve as a Professor at @NYULaw and Chair of @HumanRightsNYU. My final report to the Human Rights Council, which looks at the lack of progress on global poverty and sets out an agenda for future action, will be published later this year.
Many thanks again to the people who have contributed so much to the work of the mandate and to the goal of compelling greater attention to the scandal of continuing high levels of global poverty in a world of plenty.
My first report in this mandate observed that poverty is a political choice, and everything I have done over the past six years confirms that governments could, if they had the will, have entirely eliminated extreme poverty by now.
It is up to us all to change the mindset that assumes the inevitability of poverty, when in fact it is a largely man-made phenomenon.
