By Silas Everett and Butch Ragragio

Silas Everett is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Timor-Leste and Butch Ragragio is Chief of Party for the USAID-funded local governance, elections, and civil society project. They can be reached at severett@asiafound.org and bragragio@asiafound.org, respectively.

It’s a sunny day and the wind is blowing in off the sea from the port in Dili. Behind the government palace, the white, octagon-shaped parliament building shines in the hot, tropical sun. Outside the parliament – a few pick-up trucks, then a taxi, drives by some sauntering pedestrians.

In front of the Parliament stands Senor Jose Barreto amid a group of university students smoking cigarettes, one of whom is text messages on his phone. Senor Barreto is Chief of Lauhata Suco. Suco is a term that describes a traditional administrative unit of governance and is often translated into English as “village.” In practice, however, Suco means more than that: it is an administrative unit that has been the main local governing structure for the majority of East Timorese for at least five centuries.

While Timor-Leste, newly-independent, rebuilds itself, state services are still far from the reach of many.
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By Almerio Borges and Hugo Fernandes

Almerio Borges is The Asia Foundation’s Mobile Library Project Officer and Hugo Fernandes is the Foundation’s Books for Asia Manager in Timor-Leste. They can be reached at aborges@asiafound.org and hfernandes@asiafound.org, respectively.

Last summer, we drove a mobile library - a specially equipped mini-bus fit for travel on our small island nation’s rugged roads - outfitted with books, audio recordings, and visual media from Dili to remote parts of the country. Nothing like it had ever existed in Timor-Leste before, and what we saw on our travels to all 13 districts of the country confirmed the deep intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm this young nation has for books.

In Timor-Leste, 36 percent of the population is under the age of fourteen, 61 percent is between the ages of 15-64, and nearly 50 percent of the total population is illiterate. In this new, democratic nation with no lending library and no postal system, pervasive poverty and a lack of public access to information hampers the development of a culture of reading.
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Challenged by ongoing social unrest and marred by violence in 2006 that left 37 dead and displaced close to 150,000 people, Timor-Leste just signaled a positive step forward. Last Friday, the government announced plans for the district-by-district transition of policing authority from the United Nations security forces to the Policia Nacional de Timor-Leste (PNTL), which coincided with the appointment of a new chief of police and the nine year anniversary of the establishment of the PNTL.
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By Silas Everett

Silas Everett is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Timor-Leste. He can be reached at severett@asiafound.org.

The United Nations police (UNPOL) will soon relinquish its lead in patrolling Timor-Leste to the national police force, Policia National Timor-Leste (PNTL). Last month, the Government of Timor-Leste and the United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT) officially decided that PNTL would resume policing responsibilities and called for a “gradual and phased approach - district-by-district and unit-by-unit in accordance with mutually-agreed and clearly-defined criteria.”

Mr. Xanana Gusmao, Timor-Leste’s Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, added that the first phase of the handover would be held in the districts of Alieu, Lautem, Manatuto, and Ainaro, pending evaluation by a joint technical team of government and UNMIT representatives.

History shows that the process may not be easy. In the past, the UN has had difficulty handing over executive policing authority in Timor-Leste. In 2005, UNPOL’s handover had left a few remaining UN officers behind, when the 2006 crisis broke out. Spurred by political opponents, factions within the PNTL and the National Defense Force (F-FDTL) battled each other. Tragically, eight PNTL officers were shot and killed (one other died later) beneath the United Nation’s flag. These events prompted the full return of the UN police and mobilization of an Australian-led International Stabilization Force. During two months of violence in 2006, 150,000 were displaced. This was a major setback for the country. Almost three years later Timor-Leste is still recovering.
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On January 9, 2009, the President of Timor-Leste’s National Parliament, Fernando La Sama de Araujo, officially inaugurated the Parliamentary Research Center. The Center will be staffed with eight Timorese researchers who will work to develop creative approaches to policy analysis, anticipate legislative needs, and respond to specific requests from legislators in a timely and impartial manner. The objectives of the Center, which is located within the National Parliament, are to maintain parliamentary library resources and IT infrastructure, to strengthen legislative research functions, and to preserve official documents.
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By Angie Bexley

Angie Bexley is a Ph.D. Scholar at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. The Asia Foundation funded her print-making project in Dili, described below.

In early October, the Timorese art collective Gembel launched its first major exhibition in Dili, with financial assistance from The Asia Foundation. The exhibit, Recovering Lives Across Borders, featured the print works produced from successful collaborations between Gembel and two unique art groups: Taring Padi from Indonesia, and Culture Kitchen from Australia. The collection of works explored the inter-connection among the three nations, particularly in terms of environmental and social justice. The collaborations and the themes in the artworks themselves promote young Timorese as productive, vital members of society.
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By Erik Jensen

Erik Jensen is The Asia Foundation’s Senior Legal Advisor, a lecturer at the Stanford Law School and co-director of the law school’s Rule of Law Program. He is also an advisor to Stanford’s Afghanistan Legal Education Project.

From 1985 to 1989 I was a Senior Fulbright Scholar and a law consultant to The Asia Foundation’s office in Colombo, Sri Lanka.  During that time, I also taught in Sri Lanka’s law schools. Last December, I was back in Sri Lanka and learned that a book I wrote during my days there, An Introduction to International Law from a Sri Lankan Perspective (Open University Press: 1989), was still the standard text.  I suppose that I should have been flattered, but I was disappointed and saddened that they weren’t using a newer, updated text.  There have been no updates to the book in nearly twenty years, two decades in which incredible developments in international law have taken place.

The Asia Foundation is deeply concerned about the quality of legal education across the developing world. 
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As Asia’s youngest and poorest country, Timor-Leste has had a turbulent start. Since establishing independence in 2002, the nation has experienced periodic bouts of serious instability, including the February 11th near-fatal attack on President Jose Ramos-Horta and the unsuccessful attack on Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao and violent unrest in 2006 that was compounded by open warfare between the military and the police.

To provide The Asia Foundation with an in-depth update on the current situation and progress since independence, the Honorable Hans G. Klemm, U.S. Ambassador to Timor-Leste, visited Foundation headquarters on October 2nd.
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By Thomas Parks

Thomas Parks is The Asia Foundation’s Regional Director for Governance and Conflict Programs. He is based in Bangkok and can be reached at tparks@asiafound.org.

Dili, Timor-Leste ” The security situation in Timor-Leste seems to be improving. Since the February 11th attacks on President Ramos-Horta and Prime Minster Xanana Gusmao, Dili has been remarkably quiet. With the April 27 surrender of Gastao Salsinha and the remaining rebel hold-outs, the government has shown that it can use negotiation to resolve an ongoing security threat. Growing military and police cooperation indicates that the dangerous rivalry between the two has diminished. To the occasional visitor, the country seems a very different place from 2006 when street violence was a daily occurrence.

The relative calm, however, may be misleading, as many of the challenges from 2006 remain.
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By Silas Everett

Silas Everett is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Timor-Leste. This piece is scheduled to appear in the Spring/Summer 2008 edition of the Ultimate Sports Guide. He can be reached at severett@asiafound.org.

You might ask why Timor-Leste, at the very bottom of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association’s (FIFA) rankings at 202 of all countries, is likely to be a future talent factory for football. I see three promising factors.

First, Timorese possess an inexhaustible fighting spirit. Not 10 years ago, during the Indonesian occupation, Timor-Leste’s isolation was almost complete. Possessing a radio was a punishable crime; speaking a foreign language other than Indonesian led to detention and imprisonment. An estimated 180,000 Timorese were killed during the occupation. The Indonesian withdrawal left over 80 percent of Timor- Leste’s infrastructure destroyed. Now it’s rising from the ashes.
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