The Human Rights Committee has set a date for the review of reports on 13-14 March in Geneva, Switzerland. As Thailand is a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights(ICCPR), the Human Rights Committee requested the submission of written information from human rights organizations for the session. As of 6 Feb 2017, at lease 14 parallel reports from both national and international civil society organizations have been launched by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The examination of the reports and human rights situation in Thailand will take place at Palais Wilson building, the headquarters of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, which will be broadcasted live at  http://www.treatybodywebcast.org/

Along with the State party reports, parallel reports are a key element for the consideration regarding Thailand’s implementation of the Covenant. This is the second session after the first one in 2005. At that time, the challenging topics included war on drug policy causing dramatic number of extrajudicial killings and death squad in 2003, national policy to protect the rights of non-citizens and threat towards human right defenders. For the session in March 2017, the challenging topics will be the right to life, prohibition of torture and enforced disappearance, the killing outside the legal system, abolition of death penalty, freedom of expression, state of emergency, and the use of military court in the trials of civilians.

Cross Cultural Foundation (CrCF) submitted a parallel report on 6 February 2017 highlighted the issue of the right to life, prevention of torture and enforced disappearance, death in custody, and the killing outside the legal system, including recommendations to improve the investigation into the violations of right to life and cases of torture and enforced disappearance of which is not yet Thai criminal offences. For those who are interested, all the reports from Thai government and civil society organizations as well as list of issues have been uploaded on the UN’s website