Civil-Political Dialogue in Public Policies for the 3 Provinces Affected by Unrest in Southern Thailand

Abstract

The 3 southern border provinces (Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat) in Thailand are great multicultural areas. After Thailand endured a serious insurgency in 2001, the Thai government, NGOs and social groups came together to find a solution to the problems. This research aimed to develop a civil policy by a multicultural partnership in the 3 provinces with unrest. We started with 1) a rapid situation assessment and data were collected from secondary data, mapping the problems and focus group discussions, 2) dialogues with the religious leaders, social groups, and other partnerships such as members of parliament, 3) development of a civil policy for the 3 provinces with unrest. There were groups of 6 policies: 1) Reconstruction of management by establishment of a ministry for the 3 border provinces, 2) Reconstruction of the justice system, 3) Educational reform, 4) Reconstruction of the economy, 5) Social, cultural and tradition revolution, and 6) Health policy. All 6 policies were revised by academicians, philosophers, religious leaders, villagers, and other partnerships. After the 6 policies were revised, they were sent to the House of Representatives for the process of acceptance. The dialogues and civil politics were two of the ways out to solve the problems in the 3 southern border provinces because we can include all the partnerships and participants who were directly involved with the problems. The impact of this project was shown by a decrease in the number of violent cases because the 6 policies came from the people in those areas. We found that dialogue and civil policy could be extended to the other violent areas.

Keywords: dialogue, civil political, civil society violence, multicultural, RSA(Rapid Situation Assessment)