Monitoring the Implementation of Human Rights with International Mechanisms in Thailand: Conclusion and Recommendation

The Thai state has to accept that it does not have that much progess in the protection of human rights even though it has acceded almost all of the core international treaties under the United Nation system. The number of ratification does not show the better situations of human rights realization at all. If Thailand does not seriously take into account improvement and also preparation for such ratified mechanism, international human rights laws will on paper, still.

 

Further, in reality of Thailand, it can be estimated that more than 50 percent of Thai people do not realize of such treaties or not even know that Thailand has ratified them[1]. This can show that the Thai state does not pay particular attention to disseminating enough information on international human rights laws, especially ratified ones, throughout the country.

 

So, the very first step which needs to be taken in order to enhance the effectiveness of such international human rights mechanism is to do “Knowledge Management (KM)”. Basically, it is to give suitable knowledge on the issues to the right person. Knowledge on international legal instruments should be disseminated more and more widely so that they wil be accessible for all, more or less.

 

Firstly, it is found that people facing the human rights problems themselves will take the better responsibility than others, even on-duty officials. Therefore, giving knowledge to such people is the most effective mean to solve the problem as a whole. Surely, these people will never stop solving their own problems if they have enough capacity to do so.

 

Secondly, such governmental officials – both central and local ones – are important factors to solve and also to make the human rights problems. According the researched information, it is shown that violation of human rights frequently takes place where the officials do not have knowledge on the issues. Therefore, the responsible governmental officials needed to be trained in order to use such knowledge helping, instead of exploiting, people.

 

Lastly, civil society such as NGOs, media, and community playing an important role for human rights protection also needs to be gained knowledge to help their business for society more effective.

 

The next step which can be done along with doing such knowledge management is to do “System Management (SM)”. Although, planning to solve the problems systematically takes a long time for the better change, it is, in fact, crucial for the Thai society to follow.

 

Firstly, it is true that there are only few experts or specialists on human rights issues in Thailand. So, producing such people is very important to make this system reality.

 

Secondly, though the Thai state already has the National Human Rights Commision and the Department of Rights and Liberties Protection under the Ministry of Justice as mechanisms to promote and protect human rights, they are still unable to take part in human rights protection fully because of their own obstacles – the NHRC is only an advisory organ and the DRPL do not have enough specialist on human rights. Therefore, in every single part of the society – NGOs, media, community, governmental organs, academic organs, or even political organs – should have their representatives in order to work in cooperation as a public monitoring mechanism. So, it can double check the implementation of existing governmental organs and it is also able to assist such an independent organ in human rights activities which it has no power to do so in other possible means.

Finally, the last step to be reached to make Thailand a better place for human rights respect is to do “Attitude Management (AM)”. This step is the most difficult process and it will surely take a long time to meet achievement, but after passing those two steps – Knowledge Management and System Management, better attitude of people relating to the human rights issues will gradually reveal.

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[1] I have gained such information while working on writing the ICCPR second periodic report of Thailand. When I explained about the ICCPR and the related work, most of people said that it is the first time to know about such treaties.