Scott Busby

Guest Author

Scott Busby (LinkedIn) has worked for over 30 years on human rights, refugee, and migration issues with the U.S. government and United Nations (UN).  Most recently, Scott served for ten years as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the U.S. Department of State, where he oversaw, at different times, the bureau’s work on East Asia and the Pacific, Africa, the Western Hemisphere, multilateral issues, business and human rights, labor rights, and human rights-based sanctions.  He also served as Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for an extended period of time where he managed the bureau’s budget, personnel, and programs.

In other U.S. Government positions, Scott served as a director on human rights and refugee issues at the National Security Council (1997-2000; 2009-2011), directed the Office of Policy and Resource Planning at the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration in the Department of State (2000-2005), and worked as an asylum officer and lawyer with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Scott has also served with two international organizations:  as a lawyer at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Washington, D.C. (1992-1995) and  as Coordinator of the Intergovernmental Consultations on Migration, Asylum and Refugees (2005-2009), which is administered by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) – the UN’s migration agency.

Scott received the F. Allen “Tex” Harris Diplomacy Human Rights Award from the United Nations Association–National Capital Area in 2020 and was a Finalist for the Career Achievement Award of the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals (SAMMIES) in 2022.

He holds advanced degrees in sociology and law from the University of California at Berkeley and received his B.A. from Amherst College.

Scott is currently a Senior Advisor at Human Rights First, a Senior Associate with the Human Rights Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and a Distinguished Fellow with the Human Rights Institute at Georgetown University Law Center.