|
There are around 40 ethnic minority groups living in different regions of Thailand. Many groups live in the mountainous areas - often referred to as hill tribes, they speak their own language and have distinct traditions and cultural beliefs. The larger hill tribes living in Thailand include the Karen, Aka, Yao, Hmong and Lisu peoples.
The situation of hill tribe people is often difficult, caused by poverty, and limited access to basic social services, education, healthcare, and economic opportunities. Obtaining citizenship remains a major obstacle for many, and yet without this, they are often unable to access the services they need. Without citizenship, for example, they can attend school, but cannot get a certificate to prove they did. Compounding the problem is the fact that a majority of hill tribe men and women do not speak the official Thai language, making it difficult for them to interact with local authorities, most of whom only speak Thai. Read more... CEDAW CHAMPION – Siriporn Panyasen, Head of Tambon Administrative Organization, Pichai Sub-district, Lampang, Thailand
Siriporn Panyasen, now in her 40s, has been working in local government for almost 3 decades. She works for her tambon, or subdistrict, as chief of the Tambon Administrative Organisation (TAO), the local authority which oversees close to 10 villages. Thailand has over 7,000 tambons, local government units spread across the country that are further subdivided into about 70,000 villages.
From a poor family, Siriporn had to leave school at age 14 to earn a living to take care of her siblings. She worked as a dishwasher, a cook and a charcoal seller, finding time to also become a community volunteer at the age of 19. Volunteering slowly led to a position in the village council and then to the role of assistant village head . With the help of a sympathetic teacher, Siriporn says she was able to continue with an ‘informal education’ all this while, which helped her immensely with her work. Read more...
CEDAW CHAMPION – Ms Kanda Vajrabhaya , Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Social Development and Human Security
Thailand’s national machinery for the advancement of women was established in 1989. It was called the National Commission on Women’s Affairs (NCWA), and was made up of representatives from government and NGOs, as well as independent gender experts. The Prime Minister (or designated Deputy Prime Minister) was the Chairperson of the NCWA, and the secretariat, the Office of the National Commission for Women’s Affairs (ONCWA), sat under the auspices of the Prime Minister’s Office.
In 2003, the women’s machinery was renamed the Office of Women’s Affairs and Family Development (OWAFD). It received upgraded status as a department, was moved under the newly established Ministry of Social Development and Human Security, and given a new mandate not only to promote gender equality but also family development. Its budget allocation was substantially increased to provide necessary resources to carry out programmes targeted at women’s empowerment and the effective implementation of CEDAW. Read more...
Using CEDAW to Improve Gender Sensitivity in Judicial Decision-making
In many countries that have acceded to the CEDAW Convention, roadblocks in terms of its usage and implementation within countries’ judicial systems persist. Difficulties include the persistence of discriminatory laws that run counter to the Convention, the absence of an explicit definition of discrimination against women in domestic legislation, and limited use of the principles of the Convention in judicial decision-making, due to a lack of awareness about CEDAW as an international human rights standard, and limited understanding of its application in domestic judicial proceedings.
In 2006, research on gender sensitivity in judicial decision-making in Thailand was conducted by the Law Faculty of Chiangmai University, with the support of UNIFEM and the Thai National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Researchers looked at judgments of the Supreme Court from 1957 to the present to assess if gender biases existed in the interpretation and selection of laws used to make judicial judgments. Read more...
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
CEDAW in Action in Thailand
