Please join us on Wednesday, March 31, for a telephonic press briefing with Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Scott Busby and Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary Tom Selinger from the State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. The speakers will discuss the release of the 2020 Human Rights Reports and the U.S. commitment to the United Nations Humans Rights Council. They will also discuss the human rights situation in Europe, including Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. The speakers will take questions from participating journalists.

The briefing is on-the-record and will be conducted in English. Dial-in info will be provided upon rsvp.

BIOS:

Scott Busby serves as Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) at the U.S. Department of State, where, in addition to budget and personnel issues, he currently oversees the Bureau’s work on Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, the Western Hemisphere, the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons, visas and sanctions involving human rights, and business and human rights. He has been with DRL since 2011.

His full bio can be found here .

Tom Selinger serves as the director of the Office for European and Eurasian Affairs in the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. He most recently served as Chief of the Political and Economic Section at the U.S. Embassy in Kyrgyzstan. His other overseas assignments include tours in Denmark, Croatia, Albania, and Trinidad and Tobago. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, he served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army and worked as a locally-employed political officer at the Canadian Consulate General in Minnesota.

LOGISTICS:

Participants should join the conference 15 minutes early.
The operator will ask for your name, press affiliation, and location.
The speakers will give brief opening remarks, and then the moderator will open the floor to questions.
Participants will be instructed to push the “1” and “0” buttons on their phones to enter the question queue. You may also submit questions in advance via email to TheBrusselsHub@state.gov.
If you experience technical difficulties during the call, you may email TheBrusselsHub@state.gov to alert the moderator to any issues.

Telephonic Press Briefing on the US Commitment to Human Rights