Page 49 - Rights beautiful : collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

Rights Beautiful Collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

Minorities and Human Rights

Problematics*

-Saneh Chamarik -
National Human Rights Commission, Thailand

As non-expert on minorities, let me just take an overview by way
of making observations and raising some basic issues that may be of
relevance to our discussion here. As a concerned citizen deeply affected
by everyday infringements on human life and dignity, both within and
around one’s own homeland, my focus would be oriented somewhat towards
what has been going on in mainland Southeast Asia as part and parcel
of the world’s tropical resource-based regions. Hopefully this very aspect
of geo-political reality would be somehow taken into account in any
meaningful dialogues and public policy consideration on the rights of
minorities. It significantly adds a new dimension to the problems at hand.
Not only that we would be better informed, but also of even more importance
it should help throw more light on our common task of searching for
objective and creative solution. The term “homeland” is deliberately
emphasized here just to remind ourselves of one most legitimate human
need, both real and imagined, that underlie the minorities’ hard and
never-ending struggles around the world.
What needs first to be realized is the fact that the current problems
of minorities started out along with the modern nation building in the

* Discussion paper on Minorities and National Human Rights Institutions, parallel meeting,
Sixty-first session of the Annual Meeting of the International Coordination Committee of
National Institutions for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, Geneva,
12 April 2005.

OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THAILAND 43