An international human rights agency has downgraded Thailand’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) due to failures in addressing human rights issues.
The Sub-Committee on Accreditation (SCA) of the International Coordinating Committee on National Human Rights Institutions (ICC), an independent international association of national human rights institutions (NHRIs) from all parts of the globe who keeps track of national human rights institutions’ performance worldwide, announced that it has downgraded Thailand’s NHRC from ‘A’ status to ‘B’, the UN source revealed on Thursday, 28 January 2016.
Using the Paris Principles as a benchmark in accrediting human rights institutions in each country, ‘A’ status is given to institutions which demonstrate compliance with the Paris Principles. They can participate fully in the international and regional work and meetings of national institutions, as voting members, and they can hold office in the Bureau of the ICC or any sub-committee the Bureau establishes.
They are also able to participate in sessions of the Human Rights Council and take the floor under any agenda item, submit documentations and take up separate seatings.
Human rights institutions graded with ‘B’ status, however, may only participate as observers in the international and regional work and meetings of the national human rights institutions. They cannot vote or hold office with the Bureau or its sub-committees.
In October 2014, the ICC expressed concerns about the selection process for Thailand’s NHRC, lack of functional immunity and independence, and the failure to address human rights issues in a timely manner especially in the context of military rule in Thailand and gave the agency 12 months to address the issues.
After ICC’s announcement, the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (Southeast Asia), recommended that as Thailand prepares a new Constitution, the drafting committee should use this opportunity to take on board the SCA's recommendations to ensure the NHRC regains its ‘A’ status.
The current set of Thailand’s NHRC with Wat Tingsamid as its chairman recently replaced the former set in December 2015.
In November 2015, the outgoing NHRC more than a year after the 2014 coup d’état, admitted that the Thai junta has trampled on human rights and that the demonstrations of the People’s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC), an anti-election protest, occasionally violated the constitutional rights over peaceful assembly.
Since the 2006 coup d’état and a decade of political turmoil, Thailand’s NHRC was founded under the 1997 Constitution, has been heavily criticised for its ineffectiveness in safeguarding fundamental human rights, especially with regard to its silence over the violent military crackdown on red shirt protesters in 2010 and the previous 2014 coup.
Sunai Phasuk, a researcher from Human Rights Watch (HRW), told Prachatai earlier that the inadequate selection process for NHRC commissioners results in the appointment of unqualified people to the Commission.
“The selection process of the NHRC in a way picks people who do not have solid backgrounds in human rights and who are not independent as commissioners. This results in a lot of limitations of the rights commissioners,” said Sunai.
Tyrell Haberkorn, a political science academic who is an expert on Thailand, pointed out “the last two NHRC commissions have had several problems in terms of their independence, which prevented them from investigating human rights abuses. The rights commissioners have been silent about the coup d’état.”
The consequences of being downgraded are the following:
• The Thai NHRC will be unable to express opinions or send documents to UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Conferences, including the inability to send reports on the human rights situation in Thailand for the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process of the UNHRC. The next UPR of Thailand is in the 2016 round.
• The Thai NHRC will be considered merely an observer at regional and international human rights conferences organized by the UNHRC.
• The Thai NHRC will not be able to vote on any ICC decision or apply for ICC membership.
