“Justice is not only law. Sometimes law is not justice. It sometimes violates culture, violates history.”

Sor.Rattanamanee Polkla is a Thai lawyer and executive coordinator of the Community Resource Centre Foundation. She is also the coordinator of the Mekong  Legal Network.

Sor.Rattanamanee Polkla works to secure justice for 700 Cambodian families who were forcibly displaced due to a Thai sugar company. With the families, she sought justice for the community to hold the company accountable for their human rights violations. Recently, the courts ruled that the families can sue the sugar company and the case should move forward. This lawsuit was the first of its kind in transboundary human rights law. Now, the fight continues.

“We use the law as our tool to fight for our struggle”