Inspiring peacebuilder: Soraya Jamjuree

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.

“If there is peace, opportunities and invaluable resources will not be wasted, as in times of conflict, a nation can suffer irreparable damage to its psyche and economy in addition to the loss of lives and futures of its citizens.”

Soraya Jamjuree is the coordinator of the Network of Civic Women for Peace (Civic Women), a non-profit organization based in Pattani that helps women and children who have lost husbands, brothers and sons in the civil conflict in southern Thailand. She is also joint President of the Coordinator Centre for Children and Women, a joint government-civil society body.

Soraya’s peacebuilding work began in 2004, when the conflicts caused widespread devastation but no community organizations were doing peacebuilding. “No one dared to do anything. People were scared to act,” she recalls.

Soraya’s background as an academic at the Prince of Songkla University eased her entry into the conflict red zone. And being a woman helped her engage more closely with the women and girls of families affected by conflict “I can reach them in their kitchens and bedrooms, which is impossible for men due to the strict religious culture in the region,” she says.

Soraya visits women in their homes to help them heal from the violence, imprisonment and torture that their families experienced. These families very much resent what was done to them. 

“Healing work is like mine disposal,” Soraya says. “It is our responsibility to dispose of these mines within them so that they do not explode in the future.”

Soraya says vulnerable groups need more knowledge and confidence, so she is training women and youth on topics such as vocational skills, non-violent communication, and handling hate speech online. As part of Civic Women’s Democratic Peace Dialogues project, she has trained hundreds of people to help ease conflicts in their communities and trained women to mediate.

She has created platforms for women to speak up; her Citizen Reporters initiative with a Thai public broadcaster has produced over a hundred stories on how women resolve conflicts. 

Soraya also runs a radio show, podcast and YouTube channel, and will soon publish a pocketbook of stories from conflict survivors, Voice from the Southern Border Women.

“I am glad that the world will hear their voices and that the impact and experiences of women in conflict areas will not be forgotten,” 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.