CITATION for Jon Ungphakorn

The 2005 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service

Ramon Magsaysay Award Presentation Ceremonies, 31 August 2005, Manila,
Philippines

For much of the twentieth century, Thailand was led by military men
as governments shifted coup after coup. Even so, democracy slowly
took hold. A new constitution in 1997 enshrined civilian governance
and popular representation through elections. The kingdom's
democratic transition now seems complete. Yet today, democracy
and "money politics" have created a new power matrix in
Thailand. "We have never had a government with such authority and
power," says Senator Jon Ungphakorn, noting that the voices of many
Thai citizens remain unheard. As a member of Thailand's upper house,
he is raising those voices.

Born in London in 1947, Ungphakorn trained as an engineer in England
but made his life in Thailand, where his father, Puey Ungphakorn,
was an enlightened architect of the modern Thai state and an early
Magsaysay Awardee. Jon began his own career as a lecturer at Mahidol
University but, in the politically turbulent 1970s, turned his
attention to social issues. In 1980 he founded the Thai Volunteer
Service to expose privileged university graduates to the country's
rural poor and to the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that were
working among them. Ungphakorn helped the new NGOs to manage and
fund their projects and, as he did so, played a key role in knitting
Thailand's nascent civil society together.

Responding early to the presence of HIV/AIDS in Thailand, in 1991
Ungphakorn founded the AIDS-Access Foundation. He pioneered in
providing confidential counseling for people with HIV/AIDS and their
families, in fighting the public stigma of AIDS, and in asserting
the rights of everyone to effective and affordable treatment. As
chair of the NGO Coalition on AIDS, he fostered collaboration and
helped build an effective network for advocacy.

When Thailand's new constitution opened the Senate to election in
2000, Ungphakorn mobilized supporters from the NGO and HIV/AIDS
communities and won a seat. He says frankly that "No one listens to
NGOs, but if you are elected senator . . . everyone is interested."

The Thai Senate does not initiate legislation but plays an important
role in monitoring government and shaping the country's laws. As a
member of the Health Committee and the Social Development and Human
Security Committee, Ungphakorn used his position to advance the
concerns of Thailand's marginalized citizens, making shrewd use of
the press to publicize critical committee findings that might
otherwise have been shelved or buried in the slow-moving legislative
process. As he did so, Ungphakorn prioritized Thailand's HIV/AIDS
community—by working to include HIV/AIDS patients in the country's
new "30-baht-per-visit" national health scheme; by supporting the
lawsuit against Bristol-Myers Squibb that opened the door for
Thailand to produce a critical anti-HIV drug at half the cost; and
by prevailing upon the government to ban a food supplement being
callously advertised as an AIDS miracle drug.

But Ungphakorn has also used his senatorial authority to expose the
brutal hand of the government toward Muslim communities in southern
Thailand, and to uphold the rights of rural folk whose livelihoods
are threatened by property speculators and scandal-ridden dams,
power plants, and mines. He has inveighed against the death penalty,
against intellectual-property-rights agreements that disadvantage
poor Thais, and against a national press that has failed, he says,
to report "violence perpetrated by the state apparatus [and] the
violation of human rights."

Ungphakorn is not alone in pressing these concerns. But he and his
like-minded senators are in a minority. Most senators bow to the
government, he says. But Ungphakorn knows that his constituency and
his heart lie elsewhere. "I was elected by NGOs and the HIV/AIDS
community," he says. "They set the agenda. I give them support."

In electing Jon Ungphakorn to receive the 2005 Ramon Magsaysay Award
for Government Service, the board of trustees recognizes his
impassioned insistence as a senator that Thailand respect the rights
and attend humanely to the needs of its least advantaged citizens.

http://www.rmaf.org.ph/Awardees/year-2000.htm