Somjai is a Buddhist leader of a Muslim majority community in Pattani, Thailand. For the last ten years, she has been bridging divides between people in her village.   

“My role is to take care of my people when they have problems and solve local disputes. It’s important to maintain a sense of unity. I want to keep conversations open and prevent members of our diverse community from feeling siloed. Encouraging everyone to attend religious ceremonies like weddings, or working a harvest together are great ways of getting people to feel united.”

After years of political instability, coups and violent street protests, national elections in 2019 led to a democratically elected parliament. Nonetheless, underlying sources of deep fragility remain, revolving around political and identity-based marginalization, a lack of voice, stark regional inequalities, issues relating to access to justice, natural resource management issues, which, if left unaddressed, may lead to violence. Against this broader background, violence in the three Southern Border Provinces continues to take its toll, although the nature of this violence remains widely misunderstood. While efforts continue towards meaningful engagement between various parties, after 15 years, more than 7,000 lives have been lost. This has caused fractures in formerly peaceful social relations particularly amongst youth. These various factors risk driving hate speech, radicalization and forms of violent extremism against people of different identities, religions, socio-economic statuses, and political beliefs.