The Protection of Welfare of the Child Subjected to Domestic Violence Under The Best Interest of The Child Principle in Thailand’s Legal System

Abstract

This article aims to study the effectiveness of Promotion of Development and Protection of Family Institution Act, B.E. 2562 (2019) on protecting the welfare of the child subjected to domestic violence under the best interests of child. The purpose of this law is to reduce domestic violence by giving domestic violence offender the opportunity to undergo rehabilitation process to preventing repeat the same offences. In addition, the law suggests that the welfare protections under Article 22 will be taken to keep family members safe and promote a good relationship in the family. Moreover, Article 29 provides external control measures to deterioration of domestic violence and self-control measures for domestic violence offenders to undergo rehabilitation for various addiction symptoms and to receive psychological counseling to restore domestic violence offenders to be mental healthy person. On the other hand, Article 27 of the same law states that protecting the welfare of the subjected to domestic violence must apply the best interests of the child principle thus the paramount consideration and A primacy consideration is adopted when apply the principle. What is more, the rights of the child must be delivered to all children including children subjected to domestic violence. As a result, these four main points are examined: 1. The best interest of the child principle 2. Child development 3. Domestic violence against children and 4. The laws related to protection of welfare of the child subjected to domestic violence in Thailand. The finding of this article suggested protecting children’s welfare subjected to domestic violence under the best interests of the child principle must consider the rights of the child before the objectives of the law which gives domestic violence offender the opportunity to accessing rehabilitation process to preventing repeat the same prohibition. In addition, the understanding of child development including its concrete indicators and classifying different relationship between the child and family members base on necessity to child development will result in increasing effectiveness of the law.