(BANGKOK, June 2022)—Between April and June 2022, Fortify Rights facilitated and provided five trainings and workshops on a range of topics including refugees, U.N. special procedures on human rights, and rights to freedom of expression and association. The workshops provide knowledge and capacity buildings to more than 30 participants, including Thai human rights defenders, practitioners, and university students.
On June 30, 2022, Fortify Rights hosted a closed-door training together with the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights on engaging the U.N. special procedures on human rights concerns. Thirteen Thai human rights defenders working with refugee and stateless communities in Thailand attended the training. Held at The Fort, the training discussed the treaty-based and charter-based human rights monitoring mechanisms within the U.N. and how to submit information to these mechanisms, particularly in the context of migration and displacement. During the training, the participants also discussed on the situation in the immigration detention centers.
On May 28, 2022, Fortify Rights facilitated a discussion on best practices to build an effective protection system and understanding the needs of human rights workers as part of a workshop organized by Inclusive Asia. The session provided an opportunity to share with other human rights defenders our model of building organizational systems to support frontline human rights workers. Ten human rights workers from the region joined the virtual discussion.
On May 24, 2022, Fortify Rights facilitated a session on rights to freedom of expression and association and issues affecting human rights defenders in Thailand during the “Human Rights Defenders School 2022,” an intensive training course organized by the OHCHR designed to enhance the capacity of mid-level human rights professionals in Thailand. Initiated in 2014, the program has trained more than 100 Thai human rights defenders, most of them women. On April 20, 2022, Fortify Rights facilitated a lecture on refugee issues in Thailand to 14 students from the Faculty of Communication Arts at Chulalongkorn University. Fortify Rights discussed the definition of a refugee, current groups of refugees in Thailand, and the role of journalists in reporting on refugee issues.