Welcome back to the Tea Leaf Center’s Monthly Newsletter!  

Re-launching our newsletter is one of the outcomes of our Strategic Planning Retreat, held in Chiang Dao in April. With a communications intern to start in July, we hope to have more social media activity again soon!  

The Strategic Planning Retreat was a great opportunity to build team spirit and collaboration in our diverse team, with staff from Myanmar, Thailand and the United States. We also confirmed and discussed strategy around our newly-refined Work Areas:  

So far this year, we have been working on many research and training projects, including: 

• A needs assessment to form a network of alumni of a long-term regional training program 

• Research Design training for a post-10 program in Myanmar  

• Qualitative Data Analysis training for a research training program for Myanmar civil society researchers  

• Two regional MEAL projects  

In keeping with our new MEAL focus on supporting organizations to improve their capacity-building and empowerment while working in equitable partnerships, two TLC staff participated in virtual workshops during RightsCon. These workshops focused on various aspects of co-design and how international partners can improve their partnerships with local civil society. We contributed to development of guidelines on working equally with partners in co-development, based on our experience evaluating many projects that attempt “co-design” and our own experience working with partners. We also engaged with like-minded colleagues from around the world, introducing the Tea Leaf Center outside our usual reach.  

The world is a dangerous place for civil society, and researchers engaging with activists and communities need to go beyond their institutional ethical review process to ensure they ‘do no harm’. That means understanding the contexts and the risks their target research participants face, and how seemingly routine activities or connections can put them at risk. Toward that end, Tactical Tech published this Organizer’s Guide to data security and personal data when planning and organizing events. It covers issues like mailing lists, social media engagement and fundraising. The Activity Book has plenty of practical exercises to practice how to make sure people who take part in your activities are kept safe.  

For those engaging with Earth Rights Defenders – in other words, human rights defenders who work on environmental and related issues – EarthRights International has published a Facilitation Toolkit that can help better understand risks these activists face and how to incorporate risk assessments into research with at-risk activists. It’s also available in Thai language. 

With all the risks involved in research and activism, and a constant sense of urgency and emergency, it can be hard to sustain mental wellbeing necessary for a long career in the field. The Research Center for the Americas at the University of California (UC)  – Santa Cruz and the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley School of Law have created a “restoration toolkit” aimed at helping human rights defenders and others in field to slow down and promote well-being in order to promote sustainable capacity for continuing human rights documentation and other human rights work. 

If you are going to put research participants at risk, you should work to maximize the impact of that research so that it was worth the risk. That means you need to measure impact – a tough task for researchers. This blog post from Research to Action has “four key things to bear in mind as you embark on designing an M&E framework for your policy research project.”   

Non-formal education has been key to improve access to education among children from Myanmar living in Thailand, allowing overage and out-of-school children “second chance at education”. This “safety net” has an uncertain future after the February 2021 political crisis in Myanmar. Help Without Frontiers and TeacherFOCUS published “Safety Nets: A Situational Analysis of Non-Formal Educational Pathways for Migrant Children in Tak Province, Thailand” based on interviews with 166 non-formal education stakeholders to explore the future of this important educations system. 

Participatory research is a crucial tool to engage communities and harness grassroots activism and knowledge to address climate change and promote climate resilience. The Forests and Farmers Foundation of Thailand (FFFT), supported by the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), published a briefer on their feminist participatory action research with peasant women in the lower northern region of Thailand, looking at the “impact of the climate crisis on the livelihoods, well-being and lives of peasant women in the region.” The report, called “Peasant women leading the pathway towards feminist climate-resilient futures”, highlights collective actions of women to address the impact of heat and drought caused by climate change, and calls on national and international actors to support and include them in climate policies and resilience actions.  

Another recent report on climate change, poverty and human rights comes from FORUM-ASIA and the Indonesia Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI). “Going Nowhere: Fact-Finding Mission Report on Indigenous Communities, Fisherfolk: Harassment, Poverty and Climate Change in Indonesia” highlights the impact of the state-defined economic development framework on Indigenous Peoples and fisherfolk, including the contribution of deforestation and coastal reclamation to increased poverty and rights violations against these communities. 

With abuses by the Myanmar military continuing to terrorize civilian populations across the country, it is important to continue to document and understand these abuses and their impacts on communities. The Kachin Women’s Association of Thailand (KWAT) recently released a report, called “New Threats from the Air” on human rights violations by the State Administrative Council in Kachin and northern Shan State from November 2021-April 2022, including airstrikes and shelling of civilian areas. 

Domestic workers throughout Southeast Asia face many challenges, especially the migrants who make up most of the domestic workforce in many regional countries. New research from Singaporian organization Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics (HOME) documents emotional abuse suffered by migrant domestic workers (MDWs). The report, “Invisible Wounds”, presents evidence of different typologies of emotional abuse faced by MDWs, including terrorizing behavior, control and degradation.