Inspiring peacebuilder: Pateemoh Pohitaedaoh

From the 'Peace Together: Inspiring Peacebuilders Promoting Gender Equality and Sustainable Peace in South-East Asia' exhibition series produced for the UN Women regional project, 'Empowering Women for Sustainable Peace: Preventing Violence and Promoting Social Cohesion in ASEAN,' funded by the Governments of Canada and the Republic of Korea. View the exhibition.

“Peace means everyone returning to their normal lives. It is when we don’t have to be afraid to go to work or take our children to school every day, and when we don’t have to worry about how many family members will return home alive every night.”

Pateemoh Pohitaedaoh’s series of tragedies began in January 2004, when the civil conflict in Thailand’s southernmost provinces killed her older brother, a village chief. Within a few years, she lost four more siblings to the conflict. 

The murder of her second-oldest brother, a village guard volunteer, was the most traumatic experience of her life. She recalled: “They, two strangers, asked me if my brother was home. I answered them that he was home. I called my brother to come to meet them. I told him that his friends are waiting for him there. The moment when my brother reached the door, the first one pushed me down on the floor near the door. Then the second one locked my brother’s body and fired eight shots at his head.” 

“It was these feelings of loss that made me realize the importance of supporting others who face the same trauma as I did,” Pateemoh says.

Pateemoh, a former teacher, is President of the Women’s Peace Association, which she founded in Yala in 2004. WE PEACE has brought together hundreds of women who had lost husbands, fathers and sons in violence, including in the notorious Krue Se Mosque attack in 2004.   

“They were confused and didn’t know where to turn,” she recalls. “The women not only lost their loved ones, but also their family’s financial security, and many then had to go to court because their deceased husbands were accused of being involved in violence.” 

Through WE PEACE, Pateemoh gives these women emotional support, helps them with legal problems and works with lawyers to teach them the basics of the law. She also helps families overcome their hesitation to meet with government officials for routine administrative needs. 

Pateemoh says that the voices of the victims and survivors of violence, especially the women who lost family members, are mostly unheard. “This pushed me to explore every possibility as their representative, to be a voice for those who lost their families,” she says. 

Pateemoh advocates for more women to serve in the village, district and provincial committees across the country’s three southern border provinces. “Even though the percentage of women in leadership roles is still low, at least now their voices are being heard more than ever before,” she says.

“The process of building peace without the participation of women is not sustainable, so these peace processes must always promote and include women’s voices,” she says.

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Peace Together: Inspiring Peacebuilders Promoting Gender Equality and Sustainable Peace in South-East Asia

UN Women thanks the 21 peacebuilders profiled here who shared their stories so as to motivate others to join the movement towards more peaceful and just communities. We also thank the photographers who captured these stories in the cities and countryside of the 10 countries of ASEAN.

We thank the Satu Bumi Jaya team based in Bali, Indonesia for their creative design of content, storytelling and development of this exhibition.

This exhibition was created under a partnership between ASEAN and UN Women and funded by the Governments of Canada and the Republic of Korea. This initiative was made possible under the leadership of Cambodia as the Chair of ASEAN in 2022, particularly the strategic guidance and continuous support from the ASEAN Committee on Women Cambodia. Special thanks must be given to the ASEAN Secretariat Poverty, Eradication and Gender Division for supporting the coordination of this initiative.