Michael Windfuhr studied political science, German and geography in Heidelberg. After graduating, he spent over two decades helping set up the international human rights organisation FIAN (FoodFirst Information and Action Network), which campaigns for the implementation of the right to adequate food. He was initially responsible for case research in Latin America, then spent ten years representing FIAN at the United Nations before becoming Secretary General of FIAN. During this time, he played a key role in the standard-setting processes for the right to adequate food, such as the development of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Implementation of the Right to Food, which were unanimously adopted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in November 2004. In 2006, he became Human Rights Director at Bread for the World and the Diakonisches Werk of the Protestant Church in Germany. During this time, he has worked in the area of economic, social and cultural rights, particularly on the right to water and sanitation, the right to social security and the connection between poverty and human rights. In the area of civil and political human rights, he was particularly committed to the protection of human rights defenders and creating space for political discourse in civil society. He was also a lecturer at the Institute for Political Science at Heidelberg University for many years.
Since 2011, he has been Deputy Director of the German Institute for Human Rights, Germany's National Human Rights Institution. He has been consulting on the implementation process of the National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights in Germany since 2014. Since 2017, he has been a member of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Human Rights, which monitors the implementation of the relevant human rights covenant by the states parties. He is also a member of the independent complaints mechanism of the development banks in Germany (DEG), France (Proparco) and the Netherlands (FMO).
