Surakiart urges Thai pressure to fix Rohingya crisis

Former Thai foreign minister and former president of the Asian Peace and Reconciliation Council Surakiart Sathirathai urged Thailand to use the opportunity as Asean chair to persuade Nay Pyi Taw to develop a roadmap to ease the Rohingya crisis in Rakhine state.

The crisis has become a global issue, and Myanmar should come up with "a roadmap to peace, reconciliation and development" to resolve the issue, Mr Surakiart said.

He said that even though there are many different viewpoints on the situation, the real challenge lies in whether Thailand and other member states can convince Myanmar to come up with a solution.

Once the Myanmar government comes up with a plan, it can use Thailand to explain and let other parties listen to their peace plan, said Mr Surakiart, who was invited to give a special lecture to participants at the 2019 Thailand Institute of Justice (TIJ) -- the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School Workshops for Scholars and Emerging Leaders on the Rule of Law and Policy.

In the lecture "Navigating the Changing Global Landscape", apart from discussing the Rohingya crisis, Mr Surakiart pinpointed challenges that come with worldwide changes.

Focusing mainly on Thailand and Asean, he stressed the need to turn the bloc into a "Future-ready Asean", meaning that they need to be ready to cope with disruptive technology, internet, and artificial intelligence (AI) as well as other pressing challenges.

In order to create a resilient Asean where nobody is left behind, citizens need to be able to use and employ new technology in their lives in order to stay ahead.

"If people miss the technology train, economic disparities will widen," he said.

Therefore, human resource development is the "key we need to overhaul our education system, otherwise the country will go down the drain", he said. Workers who are not trained to be technologically skilled will be replaced by machines and new technology, he added.

Mr Surakiart said new graduates risk not being able to land jobs. He added that last year, roughly 200,000 graduates could not find work because they lack marketable skills.

As Thailand takes the lead in Asean, Mr Surakiart stated that coordination between the 10 Asean member states needs to be improved, and inclusiveness by the bloc in embracing all stakeholders is also a priority.

In the past, the private sector and other stakeholders were not consulted enough in the decision-making process, leading to a lack of public Asean ownership, he said.