In May 2025, Manushya Foundation—together with a coalition of grassroots, women-led, and LGBTQIA+ organizations—including Intersex Thailand, Mokeluang Rimnam, Young Pride Club Foundation, Tamtang Foundation and the Patani Working Group for Monitoring on International Mechanisms—submitted a Joint Civil Society Shadow Report to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Titled “Techno-colonialism and the Gendered Crackdown: A Feminist Report on Civic Space, Transnational Repression, and Digital Control in Thailand”, the report responds to Thailand’s 8th Periodic Report and sheds light on the shrinking civic space and escalating threats faced by women and LGBTQIA+ human rights defenders in the country.

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Grounded in feminist, decolonial, and intersectional analysis, the report exposes how authoritarianism, digital dictatorship, and transnational repression are systematically used to silence dissent—on and beyond Thai soil. It highlights how State and Big Tech surveillance disproportionately harm WHRDs, how women lawyers protecting refugees are criminalized under conflicting laws, and how online gender-based violence is escalating with impunity. The report also documents the complicity of Thailand in deporting exiled women activists, including Uyghur, Cambodian, and Lao WHRDs, in direct violation of international human rights law.

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The report denounces Thailand’s failure to uphold its obligations under CEDAW, and it offers concrete, feminist recommendations to protect civic space, safeguard WHRDs, and dismantle techno-authoritarian control.

 

As the CEDAW Committee reviews Thailand’s record at its 91st Session (16 June – 4 July 2025), we call on the international community to stand with the women, LBTQIA+ activists, and WHRDs who continue to resist surveillance, censorship, and cross-border persecution—and to demand that the Thai government be held accountable.