Case Study

The project on ‘Weaving Peace (in the South) Together’ (WPT) was before called ‘Intra-Buddhist dialogue for Majority-Minority Coexistence in Thailand’, which began in 2015, is a project aimed at conflict transformation in the South of Thailand. The Buddhist minority in the southern border provinces has felt marginalized in efforts to address the situation in the South. The sense of exclusion and passive victimhood in the Buddhist community has contributed to their isolation from other communities and their suspicion towards initiatives to build peace in the South. The project’s main engine for change is the group Weaving Peace Together (WPT). The group was established by the project in 2016 as a safe space to build a common understanding amongst different tendencies and groupings within the Buddhist community which will lead on to constructive efforts by the group to contribute to conflict transformation in the South. In order to empower the group, strategies and activities are developed jointly by them and the project partners. To further enhance the ownership of, and commitment to WPT group by its members, specific sub-projects proposed by WPT members are managed directly by sub-groups of WPT.

Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies (IHRP) and the Council of Civil Society in Southern Border Provinces recognizes the importance of the peace dialogue process in solving ethno-political conflict in the Deep South. This project utilized a dialogue process to create a space for collaboration between influential actors (including Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), scholars, and politicians) in solving socio-political problems. The project has continued for many years with the support of Mahidol University. In 2019 with a support of the project, the politicians and CSOs was agreed to sign the “Joint Agreement between Politicians and Civil Society for Southern Border Peace.” and agreed to mutually push forward an "establishment of a committee on the peace dialogue process" through parliamentary mechanisms.

Our research team produced various teaching tools to raise awareness of child trafficking because we believe that all children including migrant students are equally entitled to human rights. Therefore, they should be protected from all forms of human exploitation irrespective of their or their parent’s race, colour, sex, language, religion, national, ethnic or social origin, political or other opinion, property, disability, birth or other status.

Interfaith Buddy for Peace: The Weavers of Peace and Harmony in Thai Society project applies dialogues as the start to bring trust and harmony and to ultimately bring peace to the three southern border provinces of Thailand where there are still deep-rooted conflicts in with different thoughts, beliefs, ideology, and culture. This is one of the projects receiving Mahidol University’s social guiding policy driving fund to promote research which leads to social guiding by applying healthcare to build trust and lead to concrete relationship weaving. Lessons learned were extracted and offered as peace and harmony policies in Thai society by applying 40 sub-seminar field tools in six southern border provinces. There were 170 people in attendance. The researcher used interview techniques and created sub-discussions in the areas to build understanding, to weave relationships and trust. Discussions were used to add trust and initiate a cross-religion relationship. Public stages were used to create more empathy, more understanding, and bonding across the communities, expanding network for people to take care of one another, as well as design the communities to exchange their experiences through their suffering and loss before becoming friends who support each other in aspects, including healthcare, especially during COVID-19 pandemic. This could bring mobilization opportunities for friends of different religions to handle the COVID-19 pandemic.