There are few resources devoted to the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. A small staff, no matter how competent, cannot easily gain leverage within the bureaucracy without sufficient human and financial resources. There is a wide range of interlocutors with whom to coordinate activities and achieve common objectives. There is a strong sense that the United States ought to be engaged on human rights and democracy issues everywhere in the world, but there is not much concern about whether it has the resources to do it. Such ambitious expectations are not in sync with the resources allocated to work on these issues.
Officials have little time to think about human rights policy.
Strategizing, developing, and maintaining a sustainable vision of human rights implementation in the short time one holds an influential position is a significant policy constraint. In light of the challenges facing the next administration on international human rights issues, Koh offered the following advice. The core value that should be pursued is that the human rights reporting should be accurate and authoritative. This is not a partisan issue. The commitment must be to telling the truth about human rights conditions - which requires synthesizing partial and often conflicting information.