By: Windi Arini, Regional Director, Asia Pacific (a.i.), Jakarta Office
The Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (RWI) has published the Human Rights-Based Clean Air Management Toolkit for Bangkok: Self-Assessment Framework for the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA). Developed with the support of the Australian Embassy in Thailand, the publication provides a practical tool for integrating human rights into Bangkok’s approach to air quality management.
The toolkit comes at an important moment for Bangkok. In August 2025, the BMA declared its commitment to becoming a Human Rights City under the vision of “A Livable City for All.” This commitment represents a shift from viewing residents primarily as beneficiaries of public services towards recognising them as rights-holders, with public authorities acting as duty-bearers responsible for respecting, protecting and fulfilling human rights. In this context, clean air is not simply an environmental policy objective: it is closely connected to the rights to health, life, and a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
From managing pollution to governing through rights
Bangkok has already introduced a range of measures to address PM2.5 pollution, including expanded air-quality monitoring, pollution-source identification, cleaner vehicle initiatives and dust-free classrooms. The challenge identified by the toolkit is therefore not simply the absence of action. Rather, many initiatives remain dispersed across departments and policy instruments and have yet to be embedded within a coherent and durable human rights framework.
The toolkit reframes clean air management accordingly. A human rights-based approach asks not only whether pollution levels are falling, but also who is most exposed, who benefits from interventions, who participates in decisions, whether information is accessible, and what avenues exist for accountability and remedy. This is particularly important because the burdens of air pollution are not distributed equally across an urban population.
The publication also examines an important governance challenge: many major sources of Bangkok’s air pollution extend beyond the BMA’s direct authority. Agricultural and forest burning outside Bangkok, industrial emissions regulated by national authorities, and transboundary haze all illustrate why protecting the right to clean air requires effective coordination across different levels of government.
A practical self-assessment tool for BMA
At the heart of the publication is a 25-question Self-Assessment Toolkit designed to help BMA departments examine their existing policies and practices, identify institutional gaps, monitor progress and prioritize reforms. The assessment covers four areas: protection of fundamental rights; participation; accessibility of information and services; and safety-oriented and structure-based institutional mechanisms.
The toolkit is informed not only by Thailand’s legal and policy framework and BMA’s existing practices, but also by experiences from other cities in the world. These examples demonstrate different ways cities have moved from political commitments to institutional arrangements that embed human rights in municipal governance, including through dedicated human rights structures, participatory mechanisms, open data, indicators and accountability systems.
The publication was also shaped by a Verification Workshop held in Bangkok on 14 May 2026, jointly organised by RWI, BMA and the Australian Embassy in Thailand. The resulting implementation roadmap reflects the discussions and priorities identified through that process.
Turning commitment into institutional practice
A central message of the toolkit is that assessment alone is not enough. It therefore proposes a phased implementation roadmap covering the short, medium and longer term.
Among the priorities are strengthening civil servants’ capacity to apply human rights standards; ensuring civil society participation in clean-air governance; incorporating human rights and clean-air indicators into Bangkok’s development planning; improving cross-agency health-data sharing; and, over the longer term, exploring city-level ordinances that can more firmly institutionalise the right to clean air within Bangkok’s governance framework.
Ultimately, the publication positions clean air as an important test of what becoming a Human Rights City means in practice. It demonstrates how international human rights principles can be translated into the everyday work of a local government—from planning and budgeting to environmental monitoring, public participation and accountability.
By connecting human rights, environmental governance and urban administration, the toolkit offers Bangkok a pathway for moving from a declaration of commitment towards a more durable model of rights-based urban governance—one in which cleaner air is understood not only as a desirable environmental outcome, but as part of building a healthier, more inclusive and accountable city for all.
The Toolkit is available to read and download here
It is authored by Dr. Pimrapaat Dusadeeisariyakul, Dr. Wasin Punthong, Mr. Nattawat Chansrithad, and Ms. Thunpicha Greigarn for RWI.