By Ines Pousadela, CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report
At the height of 2024 Pride season, decades of civil society campaigning came to fruition in Thailand. With 130 votes for and only four against, on 18 June the Senate passed the Marriage Equality Bill. With a few strokes of the pen, the bill tweaked the language of the Civil and Commercial Code, replacing gendered references such as ‘man’ and ‘woman’ with gender-neutral ones such as ‘persons’ and ‘spouses’. It now goes for formal assent to King Maha Vajiralongkorn and will take effect 120 days after publication in the official bulletin.
This means equal marriage is now recognised in 37 countries. Recent progress has seen Estonia become the first post-Soviet state to join the ranks in 2023, and Greece the first majority-Orthodox Christian country to do so in early 2024. Thailand is the first country in Southeast Asia and the third in Asia, following Taiwan and Nepal, to recognise the right to marry and all associated rights for same-sex couples.
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