Sompong Srakaew

Sompong Srakaew is integrating marginalized migrant children into the Thai education system and local communities. He is protecting them from threats of human trafficking and labor abuse, while providing avenues for career advancement, resulting in harmonious coexistence between migrant communities and Thai society.

Sompong is working to end the vicious cycle of human trafficking and labor abuse faced by children of low-wage migrant workers. Believing that discrimination and marginalization are the root causes of labor exploitation, Sompong is dissolving discriminatory attitudes by integrating formerly isolated and vulnerable migrant children into Thai public schools. He is building new alliances for the advancement of migrant children’s education with school administrators, parents, government officials and, most importantly, employers in industries with poor labor practices. Sompong is developing replicable models of bilingual classrooms to ease the transition for migrant children, in addition to building mutual trust between local residents and migrants through youth camps and parent workshops. He has set up a network of community watchdog volunteers, from both migrant and local Thai communities, who report incidents of labor abuse to his organization. Sompong is not only collaborating with law enforcement officials in prosecuting and drawing public attention to abusive labor practices, he is also engaging previously exploitative private industries that most rely on migrant labor into allies, who are in turn, funding educational opportunities and community integration activities for migrant children.

There are more than 3.5 million migrants living in Thailand, according to International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates. Most of these migrants have entered the country illegally, and remain illegal migrants due to Thailand’s inconsistent policies of work permit registration. Some have registered with the Thai government, only to be subject to exorbitant broker fees in exchange for minimal benefits. Work permit renewal figures are plummeting, and more migrants choose to remain invisible.

Even more invisible than unregistered migrants are their children. Most migrant registration programs are limited to working-age adults, despite an ever growing population of some 377,000 migrants under 18 years old. Young migrants are particularly vulnerable to human trafficking and labor abuse. Despite Thai law prohibiting employment of children below 15 years of age, many migrant children are found working in small factories. Some children work from 3am to 9pm, peeling shrimp and getting paid by weight, 5 to 8 baht (US16 to 26 cents) per kilogram. Some young workers say they are locked in the factory until work is finished, or threatened with rape if they slow down. According to a 2010 statement by Human Rights Watch, many Thai employers give monthly payments to law enforcement officials to employ underage or illegal workers.

Despite the growing contribution of migrants to Thailand’s labor intensive industries, there is still widespread discrimination in public sentiment and practices. According to a 2010 ILO survey, most Thais (78 percent) believe that migrants commit a high number of crimes and most Thais (84 percent) believe that unauthorized migrants have broken the law and should not expect to have rights at work. In 2005, due to pressure from Thai and international human right’s organizations, the Thai government issued a policy allowing migrant children to attend Thai public schools regardless of their legal status. This policy remains largely unenforced. Many school administrators claim that migrant children will pull down the average test score and increase the average drop-out rate, resulting in negative repercussions from the Ministry of Education. Other school administrators lack support from local governments, which indirectly limit enrollment figures by controlling budget allocation for school lunch programs. Most importantly, many Thai parents do not want their children studying alongside migrant children. As a result, migrant children remain in the workforce and are uneducated. They become the next generation of unskilled labor, subject to low wages and poor working conditions. This vicious cycle continues as migrant families move across Thailand to seek employment.

Sompong recognizes that migrant children are particularly vulnerable to human trafficking and labor exploitation due to discrimination and marginalization from local communities. He is dissolving discriminatory attitudes by integrating migrant children into Thai public schools and the community at-large, as the most effective form of protection.

To address the problem of discrimination and labor exploitation of migrants and particularly their children, Sompong founded the Labor Rights Promotion Network Foundation in 2005. Since then, he has pursued a twofold approach, combining tough and gentle measures. On one hand, he provides assistance to migrants threatened or abused by authorities and employers. Sompong’s team speaks five different languages—Mon, Burmese, Karen, Lao, and Khmer—reflecting the diversity of the migrant population. Assistance ranges from helping children who are arrested for extortion to register for foreign birth certificates, to coordinating with government and citizen organizations (COs) and the media in exposing cases of labor abuse. In 2006, Sompong collaborated with some 70 organizations including law enforcement agencies in raiding one factory, where Burmese workers were subject to forced labor and physical abuse. The factory owner was charged with the crime of confinement. Since then, Sompong has compiled more information on the labor abuse of migrants and contributed to the strengthening of penalties in the Anti-Trafficking of Persons Act (2008).

On the other hand, Sompong is working to deter migrant children from entering the low-wage labor force, where they are vulnerable to abuse. He has set up pilot models of integrated education for migrant children by identifying public school administrators who are willing to accept them. Sompong matches these schools with corporate donors from the same industries in which he finds widespread labor exploitation to dissolve discriminatory attitudes of employers toward migrant children and the migrant population overall. Over the past six years, he has set up four model schools in Samut Sakhon province, where the seafood processing industry employs about 400,000 migrant workers. In addition, Sompong set up model schools in Ratchaburi province, a major town close to the Myanmar border. These pilot schools have become learning sites for other public schools. Some schools have gone above and beyond and have begun offering Burmese language classes to their students and the local community. Sompong works with these schools and the media to disseminate the message that migration is a normal phenomenon in today’s economy. Drawing on the success of these pilot schools, Sompong’s work is spreading to benefit other migrant groups and labor protection networks, including a partnership with COs in Cambodia.

To reverse the social marginalization process of migrants, Sompong conducts summer camps to demonstrate the possibility of harmonious coexistence between migrant and Thai children, as well as their parents. One of the key camp activities is a meeting of the parents. Sompong invites Thai parents to discuss common perceptions toward migrants—dirty, criminals, drug addicts, stealing Thai jobs, and so on. To transform discrimination into empathy, Sompong then invites migrant parents to talk about the problems they face—lack of basic services, abuse at work, and so forth. Using children as common ground, Sompong is able to dissolve biases and establish positive relationships between migrants and locals. In 2008, he set up the Community Watchdog Volunteers, a growing network of 30+ migrants and local residents who actively report human rights abuse of migrants in their workplace and community.

Recognizing the vital role of the private sector in eliminating discrimination and labor exploitation, Sompong is recruiting the active participation of factories and trade associations. In 2009, he convinced the Thai Frozen Foods Association to finance four teachers at a pilot school with integrated migrant education. The next year, the association offered to supply school uniforms for migrant children to attend three more pilot schools in nearby communities. In 2013, a member of the association, Thai Union Frozen Products, signed a memorandum of understanding with Sompong’s organization to begin a five-year pilot program to support migrant education in Thai public schools. The company will construct classroom buildings and finance teachers to provide preparation courses in Thai language for migrant children before enrollment. More importantly, the company’s president has given public interviews about the importance of providing equal rights and a quality of life for migrant children. Also in 2013, the Thai Frozen Foods Association announced the first guidelines of Good Labor Practices at the world’s largest trade show for seafood. The guidelines were developed in collaboration with the Department of Labor Protection and Welfare, the Department of Fisheries, and the ILO.

Sompong is transforming the private sector from adversaries into allies. In mid-2013, he set up a partnership with one of Thailand’s largest mobile phone providers to deliver Burmese-language news to migrant workers nationwide via short messaging service (SMS). Sompong’s organization provides the news content, while the phone provider contributes approximately 5 percent of the service earnings toward furthering Sompong’s work. Burmese migrants—the largest ethnic population of migrants in Thailand—benefit from this low-cost service for a monthly fee of 15 baht (US50¢). Sompong believes that equipping migrants with up-to-date news and information on labor policies will further protect migrant communities from marginalization and exploitation.

Sompong was born in a rural village in Surin province, on the Thai-Cambodian border. He grew up in a poor farming household as the fourth of five children. As a top student of his class, Sompong earned a full university scholarship. Faced with limitless career opportunities, he chose to pursue a degree in social work.

Sompong began shedding light on the problem of migrant labor exploitation as early as the late 1990s, when many government agencies still denied the existence of labor trafficking in Thailand. He has witnessed countless cases of human trafficking, and his work in exposing the labor abuse in the Thai seafood processing industry has been influential in placing Thailand on the United States Tier 2 Watchlist.

In 2008, Sompong co-founded the Migrant Working Group, a collective of Thai and international organizations working on policy advocacy for migrant children and migrant workers in general. In 2012, he co-founded Partners for the Rights of Children on the Move, a collective of 20 COs working to protect migrant children and women.