Peace and conflict studies in Thailand is considerably influenced by the security narrative prescribed by the state and manipulated for political purposes. The field of study consequently promotes the interests of the Thai state rather than exploring the socio-political factors that have sustained the longevity of conflicts in the first place. This outcome is most evident in the cases of violence in the three southernmost provinces of Thailand—Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat—and the ongoing political conflict between royalists and their opponents. Because the focus is on national security, the field often overlooks the human aspect of peace and conflicts. This state-centric focus has influenced Thai peace and conflicts studies to take an inwardlooking approach, raising the possibility of it disconnecting from international scholarship.

This article addresses the issue of schooling for refugees, as members of a stateless nation, in the context of Karen refugees in Thailand. The authors used ethnographic methods of in-depth, semi-structured interviews and participant observation with over 250 residents of Mae La refugee camp. Our conceptual framework draws on theories of pedagogy for liberation and grassroots development. We found that, due to overlapping sources of authority with divergent visions of the future for refugee learners, the existential crisis of being members of a stateless nation is the most pressing issue for education to address. We suggest that a top-down approach to refugee education relying on technical solutions, while ignoring issues of history, power, and meaning-making, will ultimately fall short of being fundamentally transformative.

In 2014, the Thai army staged its thirteenth coup claiming to resolve the decade-long political conflict. This article seeks to analyze conflict resolution efforts by Thailand’s incumbent military regime and the way in which these efforts actually affect the trajectory of the conflict. Drawing on the Thai case, I argue that the junta’s conflict resolution efforts aggravate the conditions conducive to conflict entrapment because: (1) military rule closes down a channel for meaningful dialogue among conflict parties; (2) the army’s association with Thailand’s traditional elites implies the continuation of socio-economic inequality underpinning the current crisis; (3) military rule undermines Thailand’s development of democratic institutions needed to overcome the ongoing power struggle; and (4) the junta’s political partisanship is likely to exacerbate social division in Thailand.

In 2012, two well-established international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) in the peacebuilding field, Conciliation Resources and Saferworld, published a joint report entitled “From Conflict Analysis to Peacebuilding Impact” (Hiscock and Dumasy 2012). This report was based on 18 conflict studies across a broad range of contexts, all focused on building the capacities of local actors to engage in participatory forms of conflict analysis as well as utilizing the insights gained for strategizing peacebuilding initiatives. The report’s main conclusion was that adequate conflict analysis is a key precondition for all types of effective peacebuilding initiatives. Two other notable conclusions were that the process and the ownership of the conflict analysis are as important as the results of the analysis.

This research note outlines a series of questions about conducting research on state violence and human rights in Thailand. Taking as a central problem the recurrence of state violence across regimes both dictatorial and democratic in the 80 years since the end of the absolute monarchy, I argue that the failure to secure accountability for state violence can productively be placed at the center of researching and writing about modern Thai history. Unevenness is common both to the attempts to secure state accountability for state violence and to the available archival and other sources for writing histories of such violence. This research note examines the particular methodological and analytical difficulties and productive possibilities presented by the partial attempts and failures to secure state accountability and the equally partial available documentation of state violence.

In 2008, the Thai-Cambodian conflict over the Preah Vihear Temple was reignited after the issue became politicized by political groups in Thailand. The opposition accused the Samak Sundaravej government of aspiring to achieve its private interests in exchange for Thailand’s support for Cambodia’s bid to have the Preah Vihear listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In Thailand, there was a belief that if Cambodia’s bid was successful, the country would lose the disputed 4.6-square-kilometer area surrounding the temple. This pushed elements in Thailand to unofficially declare a state of war with Cambodia. This crisis also had a serious impact on ASEAN. Thailand rejected ASEAN’s mediating role, thus revealing its distrust in regional dispute settlement mechanisms. For ASEAN, it unveiled its weakness in exercising authority over its members, and its incompetency in the management of regional disputes. This article argues that ASEAN was caught between the need to be a key player in regional politics, especially in tackling territorial disputes in the region, and the need to maintain the region’s status quo by appearing subservient to the members’ self-interest in protecting their national sovereignty at the expense of progress on regionalization.