Rights Beautiful Collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik marginalization and deprivation among local communities and peoples. Unfortunately, this is not sufficiently understood, among academics and even human rights defenders alike. For we tend to follow the norms and standards that have already been set from afar as if ready-made formula. That is not so in real life, I am afraid. As already mentioned, human rights start out as moral claims of particular groups of people in particular historical contexts. This is the crux of the whole matter. Freedom of thought and expression is not just for the sake of exercising the rights according to the set standards, but essentially to articulate newly-created moral claims that might even contradict the existing ones. It would open up the new dimensions of human rights in the world of rapid and radical change. What recently emerges as community rights is the notable case in point. It has now come to be recognized in the current Thai Constitution, for example, as a result of the effective and sustainable practices of community forestry in a good number of cases around the country.4 Naturally, it met, and still does, with stiff obstruction both from within the government bureaucracy, good old-time academics, and vested business interests. And right now a draft organic law on community forestry still gets suspended in the Parliament. At the global level, a UN Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DDRIP) has now been completed and come up for review and endorsement.5 Of course, legal recognition, national or international declaration, convention, etc., are just the beginning and still have a long way to go, as far as human rights protection and 4 5 Constitution of Thailand B.E. 2540 (1997): Article 46: “Persons so assembling as to be a traditional community shall have the right to conserve or restore their customs, local knowledge, arts or good culture of their community and of the nation and participate in the management, maintenance, preservation and utilization of natural resources and the environment in a balanced and sustainable fashion, as provided by law.” Darrell A. Posey, Traditional Resource Rights: International Instruments for Protection and Compensation for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, IUCN – The World ConservationUnion, 1996, p. 28. 8 OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THAILAND