Page 46 - Rights beautiful : collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

Rights Beautiful Collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

traditional resource rights marginalized and trampled upon. The result is
human impoverishment and natural degradation. In the circumstances,
then, a new democracy is to be required and worked out with local
communities as its base. Indeed, indigenous peoples and rural communities
can significantly provide part of the answer.
There remains one final point to be taken note of here. The need
for self-reform has already been earlier mentioned. The emphasis is on
the principle of self-reliance and right to self-development. Community
rights are being raised here, not just for the sake of defense mechanism
against encroachment from outside, but mainly as the foundation of a
new global democratic order, so that the principle of social protection and
human-enabling/ nature-conserving economy can realistically be established.
It is that, on top of the traditional resource rights as well comprehensively
prescribed in the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,
something needs to be done with regard to the existing structure of power
relationships within community itself. For one thing, for community rights
to be universally recognized and respected, the value and rights of
individuals must be well taken into account. In this respect, we can learn a
good deal from the West, despite all its shortcomings. Coming into the
changing and globalizing world, local communities also need human
creativity. And true creativity can only come from free and open society.
The point is that community rights as a system also need to allow for
individual rights and creativity. Undoubtedly this is a highly delicate task
inevitably involved in the process of social change. It is the fundamental
question of how human aspirations and rising expectations, especially of
new generations, can be accommodated and fulfilled. So this is problem of the
future, and no status quo can ever provide solution. It is indeed the great
challenge, that is, challenge from within. One only has high hope that local
traditional knowledge and wisdom will be able to live up to its potential
creativity in the common task of social reconstruction, globally and locally.

40 OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THAILAND