On 5 November, a group of activists who have formerly been detained at the Central Women Correctional Institution gathered to protest against human rights violations inside the women’s prison.

11 human rights organizations issued a joint open letter to the Department of Corrections Director-General Pol Col Naras Savestanan calling for the Thai authorities to take immediate steps to release prisoners and ensure the health and safety of all those in detention facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dubravka Šimonovic, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes, and consequences, attended an media briefing with representatives from the press and NGOs on 26 November, in which she called for an improvement to the criminal justice system for victims of sexual violence and for absence of consent to become the global standard for the definition of rape.

Since Thailand declared war on drugs 15 years ago, harsh suppression measures have been imposed and at the same time proven themselves ineffective. The number of drug offences continues to rise. Given the limited resources of the Thai justice system, Thai prisons are overcrowded, and over 70 per cent of inmates are convicted for drugs. In March 2018, the Department of Corrections revealed that Thailand had 334,279 inmates, 247,344 of whom were convicted for drug offences and most are merely users or retailers while the drug lords are rarely punished.