Children and youths are the power for change. They are not only the voice of the future, but also the agents of change nowadays. Amnesty International, therefore, focuses mainly on empowering and increasing the participation of children and youth in supporting and advocating for human rights. One of our beloved networks this article wants to introduce is the Amnesty Club, an assembly of students in universities and schools across the country. There are five Amnesty Clubs in five international schools in various provinces including Bangkok, Nonthaburi, Samut Prakan, and Phuket. Let’s see what kind of activities they do and what human rights issues they are interested in.
Amnesty Club from Ruamrudee International School and Bangkok Patana School (BPS) jointly organize an event for urban refugees on March 18th, 2023. They did fundraising and bought 20 reusable sanitary pads to donate to the refugee community. The refugees that attended the event are teenagers, around the same age as the club members, so this activity allows children from the two different communities to meet each other to exchange their views and experience. Apart from the donation, they also learn how to do urban farming with a demonstration and guidance by refugees, who do this in real life to earn a living. Lastly, they also had a pouch-painting activity and Amnesty Thailand provided them with decorative pins and stickers for this activity.
One RIS student who co-host and participated in this activity said that she felt excited, scared, and proud all at once. All her hard work had accumulated into this event to make sure it went smoothly. Communication and language barriers were an obstacle, making it difficult for her to bond with the refugee youths, but eventually, they were able to have a successful event with help and collaboration from everyone in her team.
As she interacted with the refugee youths, she realized that they were teenagers just like her, yet they were living entirely different lives. She asked one refugee boy if he learned English at school. His answer stunned her since he did not go to school at all due to a lack of proper documentation. They relied solely on education from non-governmental organizations and the church they attended.
“The boy went on to talk about how he heard there was a football field at a school, and how he wanted to play football there someday. I had always taken my school and its facilities for granted, so much so that for a moment, I had forgotten that the refugee youth did not have the same privileges,” said the RIS student.
She added that overall, this experience for her was eye-opening towards both the conditions urban refugees face in Thailand and their determination and resilience to survive despite them. The mothers, despite the lack of safety they feel in this country, earn a living in the ways that they can in order to take care of their families. Despite all the hard work during the preparation process, she was glad that the refugees seem to enjoy her activity.
“We hope that we have made a positive impact upon them with this event and that we maintain contact with them to see them continue to grow,” the student stated.
On April 5th 2023, Amnesty Club from International School Bangkok (ISB) hosted an event named Light Up Night to raise awareness of human rights issues with the central theme of refugee rights and sexual exploitation The event club booths, performances and food venders selling various baked goods, and talks on human rights issues. The Amnesty Club sold brownies and invited other students to participate in Write for Rights, the campaign by Amnesty International to write postcards showing support and solidarity with human rights defenders and fighting injustice in other countries. The guest speakers for the human rights talks include a refugee and a representative from Fight Against Child Exploitation Foundation. For the refugee talk, Amnesty Thailand contacted a guest speaker, who is a refugee from Pakistan. The talk was moderated by an activism and human rights education officer from Amnesty Thailand.
During the talk, the refugee narrated that he and his family are Christain, leading to repeated conflict with his Muslim landlord. The incident that made him decide to flee the country was when the landlord accused him of blasphemy, which could be sentenced to life in prison in Pakistan. Therefore, he left Pakistan and arrived in Thailand in 2014 with the hope to get asylum seeker status from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which has a headquarter in Bangkok. Unfortunately, his request is still pending despite almost a decade passing by. During all this time, he has been living in fear and hiding. He used to experience harassment from the Thai police that arrested him without stating a charge, forcing him to bribe himself out.
He left a final remark to ISB students that children and youths should take refugee rights seriously and help refugee communities in Thailand as much as they can. He suggested that international schools should offer a scholarship for refugee children because it is very difficult for the refugee to study in Thai ordinary schools because of the language barrier and a lack of proper documents.
After the refugee talk by Amnesty Thailand, the event invited to the stage a guest speaker from Fight Against Child Exploitation (FACE) foundation, and a representative from hotline Thailand. The FACE and hotline speakers provided insight on how in the modern world, exploitation may take form digitally. The speakers shared tips on how to remain safe online, in the ‘real world,’ and being a responsible human themselves when it comes to sexual exploitation.
These two activities reflect that Amnesty Clubs from international schools share deep interests in international human rights issues, such as refugees and child exploitation. Apart from that, other human rights issues including LGBTQ+ rights, conflicts in Myanmar and Ukraine, and climate justice are also of interest to Amnesty Clubs across the country. This obviously shows that despite their young age, they can stand up to fight injustice to create a better world as much as grown people.
Learn more about refugee rights: https://www.amnesty.or.th/our-work/refugees/
Want to be a part of Amnesty Club? Please contact: membership@amnesty.or.th