Timor-Leste

With the departure of United Nations peacekeepers, Australia becomes the largest international presence in Timor-Leste. It does so at not necessarily an easy time: despite the stark development challenges that remain, the government in Dili is tired of outside advice. Australia’s past actions over oil and gas in the Timor Sea still cast a shadow over the present. Although Australian aid in Timor-Leste is wide and varied, drawing broad conclusions about its effectiveness and impact is difficult owing to the relative absence of independent evaluations of these programs. Decisions made by each country’s leaders can impact detectably upon the bilateral relationship and complicate the work of Australian government personnel in Dili.

As peacekeepers have deployed at unprecedented levels worldwide, the demand for police to serve in such missions has swelled.The United Nations (UN), for example, has increased the use of police from two percent of its peacekeeping forces in 1995 to more than twelve percent today. The mandates for UN missions have also expanded dramatically, with greater attention devoted to police and rule of law activities. This trend reflects a recognition of the need to establish public security, combat lawlessness, and support the rule of law and governance in post-conflict societies.

Over 40 percent of the police deployed in UN missions today are in Africa, with officers working to support and build more effective and accountable rule of law institutions in countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire, and Liberia. African countries are also substantial contributors of police to UN missions, with more than a quarter of those deployed coming from the continent.

This Issue Brief explores the current demand for UN police, looks at recent and ongoing reforms undertaken at the United Nations and in the field, and considers additional ways to address shortcomings in the use of police and rule of law teams in peace operations.

This Issue Brief is one of six produced as part of Stimson’s workshop series, A Better Partnership for African Peace Operations, made possible by a generous grant from the United States Institute of Peace. The series examined progress, challenges, and potential steps forward in expanding national, regional, and international capacity to lead and participate in peace operations in Africa. The six issue briefs produced in conjunction with this project provide background and analytical context for the insights gained through the Better Partnership workshops. Each brief also highlights workshop findings and identifies recommendations for the US, UN, regional organizations, and policymakers.

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This report will examine some questions relating to the delivery of justice in countries and territories under international administration through the experiences of United Nations administrations in Kosovo (1999— ) and East Timor (1999-2002) and the assistance mission in Afghanistan (2002— ). Though the United Nations had exercised varying measures of executive power in previous missions, notably West Papua (1962-1963), Cambodia (1992-1993), and Eastern Slavonia (1996-1998), Kosovo and East Timor were the first occasions on which the UN exercised full judicial power within a territory.

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Gender analysis of actual SSR processes is sorely lacking in the SSR literature. In ‘Poster Boys No More: Gender and Security Sector Reform in Timor-Leste’ Henri Myrttinen breaks new ground in examining the gender dimensions of the DDR and SSR processes in Timor-Leste, with a focus on the establishment of the police and armed forces. The paper explores issues such as: how men’s roles relate to gang violence and relationships of patronage that undermine the security services, how women have been incorporated into the new security services and how the security services are addressing gender-based violence. It shows how a gender perspective can add to our understanding of many of the social processes at work in Timor-Leste and help to find solutions to some of the main security issues in the country, making recommendations for Timor-Leste’s ongoing SSR processes.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Background to the DDR/SSR Process

3. Gender Roles in Timor-Leste 
3.1 Women and girls
3.2 Men and boys

4. Violence, Insecurity and Gender 
4.1 Masculinities and the legitimacy of violence 
4.2 Patrons and clients 
4.3 Gender-based violence

5. FALINTIL-Forças de Defesa de Timor-Leste (F-FDTL) 
5.1 Structure 
5.2 Recruitment and training 
5.3 Internal tensions and external problems

6. Policía Nacional de Timor-Leste (PNTL) 
6.1 Structure 
6.2 Recruitment and training 
6.3 GBV and the Vulnerable Persons Units 
6.4 Internal and external problems of the PNTL

7. The 2006 Crisis 
7.1 Overview of events 
7.2 Aftermath of the crisis

8. Overview of Post-2006 SSR Developments 
8.1 The F-FDTL 
8.2 The PNTL 
8.3 The SSR process

9. Analysis and Policy Recommendations

Appendix 1. Timeline of key events from 1974-2009

Appendix 2. Overview of UN Missions in Timor-Leste 1999-2009

The primary audience for this research paper is the strategic planner in fragile and conflict-affected states (FCAS), understood broadly as any actor involved in either the formulation of national priorities to mitigate or recover from conflict, or the design of international strategies to support such priorities. The paper explores the tensions and tradeoffs incurred throughout the planning process on a range of engagement principles, including national ownership, prioritization, and sequencing. It aims to serve two purposes: i) provide a broad concept of key elements of planning and ii) identify key recommendations for engagement as well as policy and capacity gaps in the international community’s support of strategic planning processes

The first section of the paper offers general considerations related to i) the tradeoffs and tensions inherent to strategic planning processes in FCAS, and ii) the challenges and opportunities that planners face, as a means to set the context and rationale for the guidance and recommendations presented throughout the paper. The second and third sections discuss the prerequisites for and the actual steps of the strategic planning process, with a focus on current practice and its range of tradeoffs and tensions, including challenges in formulating results for greater accountability and issues related, inter alia, to ownership, prioritization, and funding. The conclusion presents a summary of findings, along with key policy recommendations drawn from the analysis and the case studies, as well as suggested areas where further research could strengthen the international community’s capacities to support strategic planning processes.

www.dfid.gov.uk/r4d/PDF/Outputs/mis_SPC/60836_CICStrategicPlanningFCAS.pdf

This handbook and its sister publication, the policy report The Transition to a Just Order: Establishing Local Ownership after Conflict, A Practitioner’s Guide, are based on the findings of a two year long study conducted jointly by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI), in partnership with the Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA). The study offers a comprehensive analysis of the principle of local ownership, the key dilemmas involved in pursuing local ownership and the challenges and issues that arise when local ownership is being put into practice.

It takes a closer look at strategies and mechanisms for transition in four cases studies: Afghanistan, the Balkans (Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and Kosovo), Timor-Leste and West Africa (Liberia and Sierra Leone).
 
The cases have been selected to illustrate the varying degrees of international involvement in post-conflict justice and security sector reform. Kosovo and Timor-Leste represent scenarios where the international community has taken the lead in taking responsibility for law and order, while West Africa and especially Afghanistan are illustrative of postconflict environments where primacy has rested with local authorities. The study is based on field visits by the authors to all the case study countries with
the exception of Timor-Leste and numerous interviews with local stakeholders, practitioners, policy makers and established academics working on justice and security sector issues. The study has also benefited greatly from discussions which took place in a workshop held in Stockholm in May 2006 as well as a rigorous peer review process. The handbook uses the findings in the case studies and examples from these peacebuilding processes to highlight some of the key challenges.

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Case studies on police, justice and corrections programming for nine UN complex operations and special political missions were developed by Stimson’s Future of Peace Operations Program at the request of the Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions (OROLSI) of the UN’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations. They are descriptive rather than analytic documents that help to organize, by mission, the issues and activities that the main study, Understanding Impact of Police, Justice and Corrections in UN Peace Operations, treats functionally, across cases, and are summarized in the study’s annexes. 

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