Starting Point
Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies, Mahidol University is a leading academic institute advancing conflict transformation for the Southern Unrest. The Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies (IHRP) is the result of a recent merger between Mahidol University’s Center for Human Rights Studies and Social Development (est. 1998) and the Research Center for Peacebuilding (est. 2004). IHRP combines the experience and perspective both centres have to offer. IHRP is uniquely interdisciplinary and redefines peace, conflict, justice, and human rights studies in the Asian Pacific region and beyond.
The Center for Human Rights Studies and Social Development (CHRSD) was established in 1998. For more than ten years, it served as an academic institution specialising in human rights, with a track record of providing postgraduate education and training programs to students, human rights workers, human rights defenders, members of civil society organisations, and government officials. The MA in Human Rights, started by the CHRSD, is the longest-running graduate degree program in Human Rights in Asia.
The Research Center for Peacebuilding (RCP) was founded in November 2004 as a research centre with the impetus to be part of the peaceful solution to Thailand's conflicts, especially those in three southernmost provinces: Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat. The Center has developed and implemented considerable action and participatory research projects. These projects focus on facilitating cooperative efforts to deal with conflicts by opening space for dialogue at all levels, reducing violence and identifying the community's and society's needs. Also, the projects provide input for new public policies to transform conflicts and build a just and peaceful society.
IHRP focuses on social and political realities at the community, national, and international levels. It is committed to advancing human rights and peace by educating human rights and peace practitioners, promoting outreach programs to community and international organisations, and conducting cutting-edge research on important issues.
Assist. Prof Dr Duanghathai is a peacebuilder and dialogue facilitator for the Southern Unrest. She is a scholar who advocates for women, peace and security (WPS) agenda at the national level. Dr Duanghathai joined the Research Center for Peacebuilding (RCP) at Mahidol University in 2005. Before working with Mahidol University, she worked with Spirit in Education Movement (SEM), an organisation focusing on enhancing spiritual learning for social change, for about seven years. In 2011, when RCP was merged with the Center for Human Rights Studies and Social Development (CHRSD) and became the Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies (IHRP) 2011, she worked on several projects for conflict transformation in the southernmost provinces alongside Dr Gothom Arya, who served as the first director of RCP, and the late Dr Parichart Suwannabhubbha, the first director of IHRP.
Dr Duanghathai received her PhD in Gender and Development Studies from the Asian Institute of Technology in 2016. She has conducted research mainly related to, but not limited to, women in conflict and gender perspectives in conflict transformation and peacebuilding. The geographical scope of her study spans Thailand and some other neighbouring countries like Myanmar.
Dr Duanghathai has also facilitated intra and interreligious dialogues designed to transform conflict and build peace in the three southernmost provinces. She was the project leader of the ‘Weaving Peace Together’ project from 2018-2021. The project started in 2014 with support from ETH Zurich and the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As one of the academicians working substantively on the issue of women empowerment and the Women, Peace and Security agenda in particular, Dr Duanghathai was appointed by the Ministry for Social Development and Human Security in 2023 as a committee member for the drafting of the National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security.
Over the past 20 years of her work in peacebuilding and conflict transformation, Dr Duanghathai’s key working principle has greatly aligned with the conflict transformation principle. “I learned that in working for peace, we need to be willing to compromise. Most of the time, the success of conflict transformation lies in the people’s ability to sacrifice something for another thing deemed more important to them. It is crucial to bear in mind that we cannot have it all. Living together peacefully requires us to make sacrifices and envisage something bigger than our own gain,” said Dr Duanghathai.
Peace Journey
Working under IHRP, Dr Duanghathai has significantly contributed to peace processes and peacebuilding. The recognition IHRP received as one of the leading institutions that use dialogue for conflict transformation in the southernmost region can be derived from the great works of Dr Duanghathai. As a trained dialogue facilitator and a Non-Violence Communication (NVC) expert, she and her team at IHRP have organised several intra-Buddhist and Buddhist-Muslim dialogues since 2015 in the south. Their intra-Buddhist dialogues were designed to promote a better understanding of the conflict and solidarity among the Buddhists of the three southernmost provinces. The interreligious dialogues also served as vital platforms for the Thai Buddhists and Malay Muslims of different backgrounds, political ideologies, and views on conflict transformation to interact meaningfully and build trust.
As these dialogues were also tied with capacity-building activities, the participants gained a lot of knowledge and skills necessary to engage in conflict constructively and become better agents for change. In this regard, it is not an overstatement to say that Dr Duanghathai has contributed greatly to the development of Track 2 and 3 peace processes by enhancing the capacity for peace of local actors, connecting them with their counterparts and creating a positive ambient for the people to work together for peace at the community level.
Her roles in the development of the WPS agenda at the national level started in 2016 when she was appointed as one of the members of a sub-committee on “Women, Peace, and Safety-Security Promotion” by the Department of Women’s Affairs and Family Development (WAFD), Ministry of Social Development and Human Security. With this appointment, she has actively participated in drafting “Measures and Guidelines on Women and the Promotion of Peace and Security” and, later, in developing Thailand’s National Action Plan on WPS. Adopting this crucial role, she has the opportunity to help the Ministry in its effort to raise awareness on WPS not only among Thai women holding leadership positions but also among various groups of stakeholders and the general public. Dr Duanghathai also engages with international organisations like UN Women, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and the Ottawa Dialogue Centre.
Success Stories
When asked about her most outstanding achievements and success stories, Dr Duanghathai mentioned three cases in which her role as a dialogue facilitator contributed to positive outcomes in improving the relationship of the people. Those are 1) conflict over fishing tools and styles of fishery in Dato, Pattani; 2) conflict regarding the wearing of hijab at the Pattani Kindergarten School; and 3) her engagement with the Buddhist hardliners from 2017-present.
About the first one, Dr Duanghathai and some colleagues from IHRP organised dialogue sessions between two groups of Malay Muslim fishermen who refused to speak to one another for a decade because of their conflict over fishing tools and intense competition. The dialogues served as an open and safe space for the people to communicate and find amicable ways to coexist and share their livelihood. “It makes me feel so happy to see these fishermen turn to one another and start to seek proper solutions for the conflict after our dialogue,” said Dr Duanghathai.
In the second case, about the Pattani Kindergarten School, Dr Duanghathai and the IHRP team organised a series of intra and intergroup dialogues. It started with a session engaging the school's Buddhist Parent-Teacher Association. In the session, she gained insight into the Buddhists’ perception and understanding of the conflict, their stand, and limitations. The following intergroup dialogues provided opportunities for all stakeholders, which broadly fell into two sides, the Muslim parents and the school, to learn from one another and understand that both parties harboured no ill will for each other as it is a delicate and sensitive issue, a dialogue. The facilitator needs to look at both the content and the context, as well as best practices from Thailand and beyond, to propose a possible solution.
For the last case regarding the Buddhist hardliners of the south, Dr Duanghathai regards it as one of the most challenging tasks she has ever done. In the southernmost region, the Buddhists are a minority group, and often, they feel neglected and sidelined by the state authorities and the Malay-Muslim community. As the statistics show, the Buddhists, though fewer in number as compared to the Malay-Muslim population, constitute the largest number of casualties in the violent attacks for the past 20 years. The feeling of being the prime target of violence has driven some Buddhists to resort to non-peaceful means as a way to protect their lives and communities. These Buddhists are who we call the ‘hardliners. These hardliners usually bear negative perceptions of the Malay Muslims, refuse to engage with them and treat them with contempt. Dr Duanghathai reached out to them and tried to convince them to look at the Malay Muslims from different angles. It took years for her to change the hardliner’s attitude and perception. However, once the change manifested, it led to many positive outcomes and improved their relationship.
Because of her tireless dedication to peacebuilding work for the Unrest, in 2022, Dr Duanghathai received the ‘Outstanding Woman Award in Advancing the Cause of Peace’ from the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security. This award has made her one of the leading female peacebuilders in Thailand.