New act ‘impedes NHRC’s powers to perform its duties’

Internet Law Reform Dialogue (iLaw) revealed that the NHRC Act, which came into effect on Tuesday, limited the power of the commission to set up a subcommittee to investigate complaints about human rights violations. iLaw quoted former NHRC commissioner Sunee Chairos as saying the new NHRC Act will lessen the agency’s ability to perform its duty.
According to iLaw, the problematic point in the new law was Article 29 which stipulated that the NHRC must consider the worthiness of a case in order to set up a subcommittee to investigate specific issues, and the NHRC should consider hiring outside people or institutions to do this task.
Sunee said she had previously warned about the limitations imposed by the new law and how it would impact the performance of the NHRC. She argued that hired academics or institutions cannot investigate human rights violations as well as the NHRC’s subcommittee, which is made up of experts in that field.
She cautioned that in order to properly understand the nature of each case, the subcommittee must go into the field to interview the people, see the situation in the real environment, and invite related agencies for their side of information. This cannot be done by hired academics or institutions, she said.
Under the old law, the subcommittee had a duty to help the NHRC committee consider specific complaints on human rights violations and investigate these issues such as land conflicts over special economic zones, dams on Mekong River, or coal-fed power plant projects in the South.