Thailand’s human rights commission grilled over its ineffectiveness

After its international accreditation was degraded from A to B, Thailand’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) faces another round of criticism from an Asian civil society network on human rights over its inaction and partiality.

The Asian NGO Network on National Human Rights Institutions (ANNI) on 29 August 2016 issued a statement criticising the NHRC, saying that the NHRC is inactive and partisan.  

“The NHRC was criticised for key issues that determine the effective performance of a National Human Rights Institution (NHRI), including: selection and appointment process of the Commissioners; functional immunity; ability to address human rights issues in timely manner [sic]; and independence and neutrality,” according to the ANNI statement published by the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-Asia).

The network pointed out that the NHRC was strongly criticised for its delays in investigating and issuing reports on the political violence in 2010 and 2013 and the process of selecting its commissioners.

“Under its protection mandate, based on the Paris Principles, the NHRC is both entitled to, and responsible for addressing and seeking to prevent human rights violations through: monitoring; inquiring; investigating; reporting on human rights violations; and establishing an effective complaint handling mechanism,” ANNI stated.

In response to a recent statement by NHRC chairperson What Tingsamitr on the government’s refusal to follow NHRC recommendations, ANNI said that the Commission should publicise systematic detailed information on measures taken or not taken by the government to implement its recommendations.

In a decade of political turmoil since the 2006 coup d’état, Thailand’s National Human Rights Commission, which 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 2014 coup d’état.   

In 2014, 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 which monitors the performance of national human rights institutions worldwide, downgraded Thailand’s NHRC from A to B, citing the agency’s poor performance and partiality.

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