Thailand

Thailand neither bans nor mandates non-therapeutic male circumcision of minors: there is no Thai statute, Ministry of Public Health regulation, or minimum-age law specifically governing it. It is a religious-minority custom — rare among the Buddhist majority and concentrated among Malay-Muslim boys in the southern provinces as a pre-adolescent rite.

The principal child-welfare statute, the Child Protection Act B.E. 2546 (2003), contains no provision mentioning circumcision, foreskin, or any specific surgical or traditional bodily procedure, and sets no minimum age or surgical-consent rule. Its only relevant limits are general: a "best interests of the child" standard (S22), a clause permitting child-rearing per local traditions/customs/culture subject to a no-harm floor and ministerial minimum standards (S23), and a no-harm/anti-torture prohibition regardless of the child’s consent (S26) — provisions that would catch a botched or harmful circumcision but do not regulate the practice itself. (Note: applying S23/S26 to circumcision is honest legal inference; the Act does not name it, and no case law was found.) In the Muslim-majority south (Satun, Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat) circumcision (sunat/khitan/"masuk Jawi") is a rite of passage on boys aged about 7–12, performed both traditionally (imam, bomoh, tok mudin) and biomedically by physicians; provincial health staff in Satun have participated in mass mosque circumcisions and trained traditional cutters in hygiene — voluntary capacity-building, not statutory licensing. Thailand has no national VMMC or neonatal-circumcision HIV-prevention program.