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ENLAWTHAI Foundation

Bangkok, Thailand
Joined December 2022

Provide legal support to people, particularly local communities suffered from industrial pollution and impact, in exercising their rights and accessing to environmental justice.

Presence in: Thailand
Focus: Community Paralegals, Environmental Justice, Legal Aid & Public Interest Law, Policy Advocacy, Right to Information

ENLAWTHAI Foundation (EnLAW) has been founded as a result of consensus reached among NGOs working on the environment, energy, human rights and development. They all agreed that the government’s intense industrialization policy has engendered industrial pollution causing extensive impact on people’s livelihood and the environment, directly and indirectly. In addition, the implementation of many projects has taken place without public participation and has led to blatant infringement of people’s and community’s rights. Meanwhile, existing laws for natural resource and environmental management in Thailand have failed to cope with the residue of development. The legal problem is twofold including a lack of enforcement and the laws themselves are stagnant and have not been changed to cope with the evolving situation and the ever more complex and chronicle environmental problems.

EnLAW was thus set up and founded in 2001 with a mission to provide legal support to people, particularly local communities suffered from industrial pollution and impact, in exercising their rights and accessing to environmental justice, to monitor and identify the flaws in the current environmental legal system and to advocate change of the existing law to provide better protection to environment and health. EnLAW also works to protect and promote human rights and environmental democracy under the concept “environmental justice in Thailand is made possible by legal and human rights mechanisms”. EnLAW was registered as “ENLAWTHAI Foundation”, a legal entity under the Thai law in February 2013, and as an ‘Environmental protection and natural resources conservation organization under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment in 2014 with the same spirit and missions.