Community Empowerment and Human Development

This report, Thailand’s second NHDR focuses on community empowerment as a means to human development, uniting the idea of human development and the commitment to human rights. This approach makes development into a right that people can claim, (rather than a gift bestowed by others), which in turn empowers people. The Report calculates the HDI for Thailand, disaggregated by province to reveal a striking pattern. The Report contains the vision of community leaders who are local people from all regions who describe how they have struggled to gain power to improve their lives. The Report then reviews the institutional context for community empowerment in the country and goes on to suggest ways that various actors – communities, government, development organisations – can assist community empowerment, and what changes in national policy-making are needed to promote community empowerment as a means and end of human development.