The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is gravely concernedto have learned that Thanapol Eawsakul, writer, human rights defender, and editor of Fa Diew Kan (Same Sky) journal and publishing house, has been re-arrested and is being held by the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO). The conditions of his re-arrest and detention are arbitrary and a clear derogation of the Government of Thailand's obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

Obstacles in the implementation of norms & standards of rights in developing countries2 Reading from the abstracts of papers from other participants and guest speakers for this Conference, the idea of 'access to justice', as a theme to improve work on torture prevention and rehabilitation of victims is given strong importance. To lay the basic orientation of this paper, I resolved to review first the literature on how this term were originally conceptualized; and, in developing countries in Asia, where all of the participants have enormous experience in terms of torture prevention and rehabilitation, how they operate in reality.

An Open Letter from the Asian Human Rights Commission to the Minister of Justice, Thailand Thank you for your letter of 15 March 2011 (No. 0808/1379) to the staff of the Urgent Appeals Programme, Asian Human Rights Commission, concerning the case of Somchai Neelaphaijit, a human rights lawyer whom police abducted from his car on 12 March 2004 at a time that he was representing clients whom police had tortured, and whose case remains unsolved and whose whereabouts are unknown to the present day.

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) wishes to draw your attention to the harassment and threats faced by Ms. Yaena Salaemae, a long-time Woman Human Rights Defender (WHRD) in Tak Bai district of Narathiwat province in southern Thailand. The state authorities used an attack on a police checkpoint near her house to search her house and intimidate her. The AHRC believes that this is an outright attempt to intimidate Ms. Yaena and cause her to cease her work calling for justice in the case of the Tak Bai massacre and other cases of human rights violations in southern Thailand.

For 100 years now, a strong struggle for equal rights between genders has been taking place in the world. International women's day is the opportunity to celebrate women's economic, political and social achievements. It is the day to acknowledge the enormous potential of women in service of the prosperity of their communities and the core societal role they have to play for peace and political and economic development in their countries.