FACE Organization

FACE is a small local NGO in Thailand. And as mentioned earlier, though FACE was only established in April 1995, it is the continuation of action of the study in 1987 and of the ECPAT campaign since 1990. The Chairman of FACE, Mr. Wanchai Roujanavong, a civil servant , Public Prosecutor with the Office of the Attorney General, and Sudarat Sereewat, FACE Secretary General, have been working for the ECPAT campaign (Sudarat since 1990, Wanchai since 1994) and started to monitor some court cases in order to allow the victimized children to receive justice and the abusers be prosecuted. But as ECPAT then did not want to expand the mandate (from just campaigning) to monitoring work, the decision was made to set up FACE to work on this aspect of the problem of child sexual abuse occurred in Thailand , as a Thai organization. That is monitoring the legal cases against the abusers, especially foreign abusers arrested in Thailand and abroad in connection with child victims in Thailand. Besides, all information and methodology obtained from the work can be used as a model for monitoring work internationally, the international cooperation through the mutual legal assistance and finally, all result can be used as the content for continuing the campaign as well. Apart from that, we think that it is necessary to have a concrete action to deal with actual cases of child sexual abuse and use the lessons learned to advocate the policy makers and law makers to improve the legal mechanism and procedure dealing with international sexual crimes against children as well as the law itself.

The matter of setting up FACE was brought to discussion with some Thai authorities, especially those who have been supporting or be involved in the monitoring work, namely :

- Dr Saisuree Chutikul, the then Advisor to the Office of the Prime Minister,;
- Dr Kanit Na Nakorn, the then Attorney General;
- Judge Jaran Pakditanakul, the then General Secretary of the Judicial Affairs Office;
- Prosecutor Wanchai Roujanavong, the then Deputy Director of Mutual Legal Assistance for Criminal Matters Division;
- Police Major General Surasak Suttharom, Deputy Commander of Bangkok Metro Politan Police;
- Mr Seree Wangpaijitr, the then Governor of Tourism Authority of Thailand;
- Ms. Srisawang Phuavongphatya and Ms. Srisak Thaiarry, two senior NGOs friends etc.

That is how FACE was set up separately as a Thai organization carrying out work at the national, regional and international level.