Nine years after the Rohingya genocide, survivors remain in exile while the junta chief who commanded the genocidal campaign received red carpet welcomes. We share an excerpt from Rohingya genocide survivor and feminist activist Yasmin Ullah’s powerful op-ed. After seeing Arakan across the Naf River for the first time in her adult life, Yasmin, also the Executive Director of Rohingya Maìyafuìnor Collaborative Network, writes of a homeland made painfully real and a world norma

Are we truly protecting children online if we do not confront the systems that profit off of their harm? #NoToAgeGating "The isolation [that our younger generation is facing] did not appear from nowhere. It is produced by the same economic order that hollowed out public education. Capitalism offered this generation debt and precarity amidst a global ecological collapse instead of a future. [Capitalism] has nothing to give an alienated teenager except the attention economy's

#RememberSlavery ⛓️ On the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, we reflect on how the United States’ 13th Amendment’s loophole perpetuates a legacy of exploitation. The legal exception embedded in the 13th Amendment allows slavery to persist under the guise of "punishment for crime," fueling the prison-industrial complex and disproportionately targeting Black and Brown communities. 🔗 From convict leasing in the post-Civil War South to t

Understanding violence, militarisation, and the struggle for self-determination #FreePatani ✊ On this International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief, we honour those whose lives have been altered by conflict in Thailand’s Deep South. For over two decades, the region has endured protracted violence and militarisation, a burden borne heavily by local communities and women sustaining life amid crisis. But reducing Patani to a narrativ

At Manushya, we walk the talk with our values. We unapologetically confront systems of domination persisting across Southeast Asia — whether that’s digital dictatorship, transnational repression, SLAPPs, corporate greed, or colonialism and extractivism in the human rights sector. Want to dismantle systems of oppression too? Follow us at @manushyafoundation (add this only for IG) for more fierce feminist content! #WeAreManushyan ♾️ Equal Human Beings

🌈 Last week, we joined “Queer and Feminist Lives in a Struggling Planet: A Southeast Asian Convening on ASEAN and Environmental Rights,” a space for queer and feminist activists, human rights defenders, and allies across the region to come together and find solutions to the polycrisis, organised by our fierce allies at ASEAN SOGIE Caucus, together with Greenpeace Southeast Asia. 🇮🇩🇵🇭🇲🇾 Across the region, communities are facing the brunt of climate change, environmental

Celebrating the courage of humanitarian aid workers without confronting the colonial violence that killed them, and who made those killings possible, is an insult to their lives. 🇵🇸 In less than three years, at least 595 aid workers have been killed in Gaza, the highest toll ever recorded in a single crisis. 189 were women. The overwhelming majority were Palestinians serving their own communities while surviving the same bombardment, forced displacement, hunger, and grief.

⚖️ On 14 July, Thailand’s Cabinet greenlit a draft deportation regulation designed to expel foreign nationals “without delay” and without legal protections. But when speed replaces due process, lives of human rights defenders are destroyed. As Manushya Foundation’s Founder Emilie Palamy Pradichit reminds us: “Laws do not choose between protection and punishment; people do.” The Thai government is making a choice: 𝙒𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙞𝙩 𝙪𝙥𝙝𝙤𝙡𝙙 𝙞𝙩𝙨 𝙗𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙡𝙚𝙜𝙖𝙡 𝙙�

An authoritarian superpower seeking to silence its critics abroad needs to look no further than Thailand for a model partner-in-transnational repression. 🇹🇭🤝🇨🇳 Right now, Chinese human rights defenders and UNHCR-recognised refugees Bai Zhaodong and Zhou Junyi remain detained in Bangkok, within arm’s reach of the regime they fled. Their forced return will expose them to torture and enforced disappearance. Thailand has a choice: protect human rights defenders, or cement it

#SaveChaoLay! On the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, we lay bare how the tourism industry of Koh Lao, Thailand profits off compounding violence against the Moken peoples who call it home. In this interview, Naowwanit Chaemphit, an Indigenous woman human rights defender and community leader, exposes how the tourism industry of Koh Lao, Thailand profits off compounding violence against the Moken peoples who call it home. She joined Manushya’s workshop, “Tur

The fight for justice can be long. Some changes may take years, even generations. But if we want to stay in the movement for the long run, we need to care for ourselves along the way. 🩷 So, which wellbeing activity are you choosing today? Drop your emoji in the comments and tag a fellow activist who deserves a moment of care, too! 🫶 As Audre Lorde reminds us, caring for ourselves is not self-indulgence but an act of political warfare. Rest is not giving up. The movement nee

Today, Thailand rolled out the red carpet for Min Aung Hlaing, architect of Myanmar’s 2021 coup and ICC-wanted war criminal, who seeks international legitimacy for his “presidency” following military-engineered sham elections in April. ⚠️ While millions in Myanmar are bombed, jailed, and driven from their homes under Min Aung Hlaing’s regime, Thailand rewards their oppressor with official honours and business forums. Even worse, Thai authorities are actively colluding in tran

🌏 On 26 May 2026, Manushya Foundation convened a closed-door regional expert meeting “Closing the Protection Gap for Human Rights Defenders in Southeast Asia: Regional Expert Meeting to Address Transnational Repression” in Bangkok, Thailand. We brought together 54 human rights defenders, survivor-advocates, frontline responders, UN actors, diplomats, and civil society allies with one urgent objective: 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗔𝘀𝗶𝗮 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻

We’re looking for two bold, emerging feminist communicators to join Manushya Foundation as Communications Fellows! We have two openings: ✍🏽 𝗙𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗻𝘀 𝗙𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄: for an emerging journalist or activist-campaigner with a compelling pen and strong political voice. 📱 𝗗𝗶𝗴𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 & 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗙𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄: for a creative social media storyteller who understands Thai audiences, online culture, and short-form video. This six-mo

This year’s UN theme, “Trapped Behind the Scam,” asks the world to look at the people forced into online fraud. But we must also ask: what trapped them there, and who keeps profiting? Across Southeast Asia, trafficking networks weaponise marginalised communities’ need for dignified work. From Thailand serving as a key transit route 🇹🇭 to Laos’s Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone 🇱🇦 becoming a hub for forced criminality, punitive borders and neoliberal economic policies