Hear the Voices of Peace from Thai Youth

CYM/TVS is bringing 4 Thai youth representatives from different groups and organisations to join the International peace conference on the topic 'Peace, Justice and Reconciliation' in Angkor, Siam Riep, Cambodia from 18th-25th September 2008. At the conference there will be country presentation, workshops, cultural performances, art exhibition on NGOs experiences and International Peace's Day march in public. This conference will bring together 300 youth participants from Rwanda, Guatamala, Peru, Morrocco and Southeast Asia (most of them are Cambodian youth). Before the four of them are landing on the land of Angkor, below is the opinion and expectation from this upcoming conference. Hear their voices below!

Watcharin 'Rin' Sungkara, from Tonkla Institute

The conference topic is so contemporary. Today society has faced many recently conflicts that started even in family unit, village, state and worldwide. And many conflicts end shortly through violence that cause people sadness, angry emotion and yes even death. So reconciliation is a need for us who still have to live and start the harmony society again and again. But how should we deal and learn from our past conflict so that we can protect people from any kinds of violence that we don’t want.

So I hope to learn about ‘post-conflict-process’ that you set up during this meaningful conference and wish that we could maybe implement or try to do something for our relevant issues of ‘Preah Vihear’ together. And also for others many conflicts in Thailand as well.
I think this would be great opportunity for me to share about conflict issues with other participants from different countries and each conflict must come from different problems. And I believe that solving problems about the conflict in any country needs the same goal which is building reconciliation or peace.

Khumkhao Songsomboon, 27, TVS laywer full-time volunteer

1. Why are you interested in coming to the conference in Cambodia?
I think this would be great opportunity for me to share about conflict issues with other participants from different countries and each conflict must come from different problems. And I believe that solving problems about the conflict in any country needs the same goal which is building reconciliation or peace.

Nowadays, we talk about ‘peace’, most people may think of the country without war. But at the same time, we think of the country that the war is just over, it does not always mean that the country will be peaceful.

Losing lives, love ones or even properties that the survivals have experienced after the war is a learned lesson that I would really like to learn from other participants who have been through this experience.

I believe that this would be a good opportunity among the participants to share learned experience about peace building within their own countries to other participants. And I hope I can adapt what I have learned during the conference in my own country.

2. What would you like to learn during the time in Cambodia?
I would like learn about Cambodian cultures and their way of lives, especially the lived of survivors whose lives had been affected from previous genocide. Besides that I would like to listen to the opinions of Cambodian youth towards the post-conflict situation in their country and learn how their historical knowledge has been passed on to their generation.

3. What do you think you can contribute to the post-conflict-process in Cambodia?
I believe that correctly learning about the true cause of mass-killing problem in Cambodia will help benefit me and others. I would pass on this knowledge to group of my friends and my colleagues. This will encourage me and the rest of my people back home to realize that the history of genocide in Cambodia is not only a problem in Cambodian, but it is also a problem happened in our world society to all human races.

4. In which way, you think you can use your made experience in Cambodia in your home country?
I think the experience that I will get from this conference is to learn about the history of conflict and the history of wars – learning in the right way, not just to remember the dates, years or persons in the history, but remember how important the event in the history is about, what caused the problem and think about it by using critical thinking.

This will open my views of main purpose of learning history and implementing the lesson learned from the conflict or the war and putting it in the school curriculum.
And it will be very useful for me to be a part of working on improving about social study and history courses in school curriculum in my country.

If the Thai students learn how to analyze the historical knowledge in their history or social study courses, it will be very useful to them, they will realize that they are learning not only to remember but also to analyze and get involve in what they have learned at school.

Wanmai Chaiyarin, 22, a political science student from Rajabhat Yala University

1. Why are you interested in coming to the conference in Cambodia?
I would like to learn about the post-conflict situation in Cambodia and learn more about the situation on politics, education, economic and other interesting issues. And I also would like to share my experience and ideas about voluntary projects on peace building and as well as learning experiences from other participants.

2. What would you like to learn during the time in Cambodia?
I am already eager to learn everything from this conference.

3. What do you think you can contribute to the post-conflict-process in Cambodia?
I would like to present and share my ideas about peace building from my perspectives to everyone in the conference – if there are chances.

4. In which way, you think you can use your made experience in Cambodia in your home country?
I think I would bring my made experience in this conference to adapt in the projects that I am working on and on the other hand, this will help me to analyze about the current unpeaceful situations in the country to see what the insiders and outsiders think about this situation.

Jaruwan Supolrai, 25, an intern at CYM of Thai Volunteer Service

1. Why are you interested in coming to the conference in Cambodia?
Last year I was helping CYM/TVS as a volunteer interpreter with their GNH project, which was very interesting to me at that time, since then I’ve been interested in NGO social activists’ projects in Mekong region. And last month, I had attended the Thai-Malay Dialogue meeting in Penang, Malaysia, organized by AMAN (Asian Muslim Network) and ARF (Asian Recourse Foundation).

The idea was about peace-building in the southern part of Thailand. And I’ve come to understand and learn more about peace study and the importance of peace in Thailand and Southeast Asian regions. And I am recently working for CYM as a coordinator. So I believe that joining this conference will give me more experience on peace-building activities and hopefully I will get more networks of friends who share the same interests of peace project t make a world a better place to live.

2. What would you like to learn during the time in Cambodia?
During my time in Cambodia, I would like to learn and experience about peace building projects from other participants in Southeast Asia region and other part of the world like Rwanda, Peru and Guatemala. Hopefully, we will come up with the initiative ideas to build up peace movement within our own region and other part of the world.

3. What do you think you can contribute to the post-conflict-process in Cambodia?
I am not sure I am able to contribute something to the post-conflict process in Cambodia, since my work is not only focusing on peace building, but other issues as well. But I hope I can partly work and cooperate with the youth group of peace in Cambodia.

4. In which way, you think you can use your made experience in Cambodia in your home country?
After I bring home with the experience made in this conference, I hope I can keep working on peace issue with the youth group in Thailand – just to be a small part of this big issue in today’s society. Let’s give it a try! And one more thing, I will write a feature article about this conference for an English local magazine for teenagers