The 1988 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding

Please allow me to confess that I feel most "tuen ton chai," which is a Thai expression meaning that my heart is full of delight, excitement, fright, and gratitude, so full that it is difficult to do anything but smile. Please, therefore, do not think badly of the Foundation for being responsible in today's event in selecting, for this very high honor, a PROJECT with such a poor performing director.

As commanded by His Majesty King Bhumibol, chief of the ROYAL PROJECT, "we gild the back of the Buddha." To a Buddhist, this means that we do a good deed because it is right to do so. We must not do it to show off. Accordingly, it is especially rewarding to be selected for the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

Just before leaving Thailand, I was honored by an audience with the chief of the ROYAL PROJECT, and I asked His Majesty why, in his words, he founded the PROJECT. He answered that as a citizen of Thailand he was saddened by the poor lives the hill tribes led. Further, their lifestyle was at enormous cost to Thailand because they practiced shifting cultivation—destroying forest, watershed, and soil fertility as they moved along—and produced opium, which destroyed lives around the world.

While it is generally considered that opium is gold, and the area producing it is called golden, His Majesty discovered nineteen years ago that, in a tropical country, temperate climate crops could bring a higher return than opium. The ROYAL PROJECT, therefore, came into being to try out his idea—which has been proved correct. We are now eliminating opium by the gentle and productive way of giving our hill farmers other crops that make them richer.

We have enjoyed cooperation from countries sympathetic to our cause, such as the United States, the Republic of China (Taiwan), Australia, Israel, France, and the United Kingdom. We would like to take this opportunity of thanking them for their most valuable assistance. However, perhaps due to the policy of "gilding the back of the Buddha," many do not know of our effort. Your recognition of us through the International Understanding Award should make us better known internationally. This is very good. Various organizations interested in eliminating narcotics in their nations may come and see what we are doing. Their subsequent efforts may then lessen the suffering of mankind even more.