Forced Labor in Burma

Richard Horsey is a former International Labor Organization (ILO) representative to Burma, where he helped develop and implement the organization's strategy of engaging with the government while applying pressure to curb abuses. The ILO’s efforts eventually compelled the Burmese regime to take significant steps to outlaw, deter, and prosecute forced labor crimes.

As an Open Society Fellow, he wrote the first comprehensive account of ILO efforts to address forced labor in Burma, Ending Forced Labor in Myanmar: Engaging a Pariah Regime (Routledge, 2011). He also co-authored an input paper for the World Bank's 2011 World Development Report, which applies lessons learned during the fellowship to Zimbabwe and North Korea.

After leaving the ILO in 2007, Horsey advised the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs on the international response to Cyclone Nargis. Today, he serves as an advisor to the International Crisis Group and recently completed a major research project in Zimbabwe as part of a multi-country study looking at community coping mechanisms in different kinds of crisis (Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Sudan). 

Stephen Hubbell is senior public affairs officer for the Open Society Fellowship Program. He consults closely with fellows to develop media strategies to broaden public awareness of their work and to integrate fellows into the global Open Society community. 

Hubbell joined the Open Society Foundations after 20 years as a journalist and editor. He has worked as a senior editor at Metropolitan Books and at Harper's, where he edited the work of many notable writers, including Anne Fadiman, Harold Brodkey, Elliott Currie, Marilynne Robinson, Alan Weisman, Arlie Hochschild, and Edward Fox. He has also served as Middle East correspondent for The Nation, for whom he covered the first Gulf War and the rise of political Islam.

He received his bachelor's degree in government from Wesleyan University.