The State Department named former U.S. Ambassador Michael Guest, who also serves as a Senior Advisor to the Council, as the head of the U.S. delegation to an upcoming human rights conference in Warsaw, Poland in October.  At this annual human rights meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which includes Eastern and Western Europe and North America, the United States will be speak out against violations of the rights to freedom of speech and association, while also highlighting patterns of extreme violence against minority communities, including the increasingly well-documented trend in LGBT violence and hate crime across the region.  This is the first time that the United States has included an openly gay advocate on its official delegation to the OSCE to address these alarming human rights trends.