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Gender equality, measures its power distributed by gender, women’s
participation in civil society, women in parliament, and ministerial level positions.
When it comes to gender equality, Thailand had continuous growth since 1975
up until 2017.
On social rights and equality, Thailand has had continuous growth,
declining 2012, 2013, but not significantly, and started to see gains again in
2016 and scores at the same level as South East Asia, and Asia and the
Pacific. Similarly, even though Thailand had some declines in inclusive suffrage
since 1975, we can observe that it has been quite stable on this aspect since
1995.
So, what are the challenges? We can see that Thailand has had several
significant declines in representative government since 1975. We can also
observe that along with the significant declines, there have been significantly
gains the years after. The last decline started in 2012 continuing until 2017.
But it’s interesting to see that the decline is not as deep as 1973 or 1977.
The only sub-attribute with Thailand scores 0 is elected government. We can
see that Thailand has had several deep declines since 75, but also made
significant recoveries.
When it comes to fundamental rights, we can see that Thailand was
stable on the slightly increasing trend, the gains and declines not significant
until 2012, 2013, when it declined sharply.
We can see similar trends on when it comes to freedom of association
and likewise on, rushing through a bit in interest of time, and the freedom of
movement, media integrity, checks on government, as well as civil society
participation.
I would like to emphasize that the data can be used to describe reality,
but they do not explain why trends look like they do, and what factors have
contributed to explain these causes of these trends. Only qualitative and in
depth country analysis and debate and discussion can do that.
To conclude, the current democratic landscape is facing an increasing
number of challenges. Since 2014, more countries have seen democratic
declines than advances. However, if we do adopt a longer term historical
perspective, significant democratic gains have been achieved over the last 42
years, leading to expansion of democracy into new regions that previously have
really no experience on democratic forms of government. So, democratically ²£ ´£²¢¡¸¡¡Á¥°£°ª²£l²h²£°À¨
speaking, the world today is faring better that it did in 1970s or 1980s.
Nonetheless, these current challenges must be taken seriously and addressed to
ensure that these declines do not take hold and gain further ground. And more
