East Timor News Digest 11 – November 1-30, 2010
- Six years later, army to pull out of Timor - Sydney Morning Herald
- Asylum verdict 'won't affect' East Timor plan - Australian Associated Press
- AusAID to cut Timor advisory roles - Radio Australia
Six years later, army to pull out of Timor
Sydney Morning Herald - November 4, 2010
Lindsay Murdoch – Australian troops will withdraw from East Timor in 2012 – six years after hundreds of them arrived in the half-island nation to quell violent upheaval.
East Timor's leaders, including the President, Jose Ramos Horta, have decided to end the deployment of the Australian commanded International Stabilisation Force (ISF) after elections in 2010 because the country's security situation has stabilised, said Duarte Nunes, the head of East Timor's parliamentary committee on defence and security.
"They will leave the country in 2012, now the ISF's number is reduced in our country, as we remain calm," Dr Nunes told Timorese journalists.
No announcement about the planned withdrawal has been made by the Gillard government or the Australian Defence Force. A spokesman for Defence said last night they could not comment on when the troops would be withdrawn and questions should be referred to the Timorese government.
Meanwhile, Dr Ramos Horta has told an AAP reporter in Dili he does not intend to recontest the presidency at the 2012 elections and will take on a mentor's role after 40 years of activism for the Timorese.
Dr Ramos Horta, who spent 24 years in exile and was shot and wounded by a rebel soldier in 2008, has played an important role in mediating disputes between political rivals in Dili and has been the driving force behind a number of projects to boost the country's economic development and tourism.
There are 400 Australian and 75 New Zealand troops serving in East Timor in the ISF, which has been training East Timor's military for the past 18 months.
But Dr Ramos Horta told AAP his decision to step down was an expression of confidence that order and stability would be maintained in the country.
"It might be time to move on, step aside so that others can do their duty," he said. "Even if I leave politics, it doesn't mean I would abandon the new generation that take over," he said. "If they so desire, I would be very happy to stand behind them [as mentor]."
AAP reported that Dr Ramos Horta has held a number of meetings about the presidency with figures linked to Fretilin, the political party that lost power in 2006, including the former prime minister Mari Alkatiri and Dr Ramos Horta's former wife Ana Pessoa Pinto.
Asylum verdict 'won't affect' East Timor plan
Australian Associated Press - November 11, 2010
A High Court judgment has raised questions over whether the government can successfully process refugee claims quickly and efficiently, Acting Prime Minister Chris Evans says.
But he says it does not undermine the government's pursuit of a regional processing centre in East Timor.
The High Court handed down a judgment in favour of two Tamil asylum seekers yesterday, ruling they were denied procedural fairness in applying for refugee status. The court found the Sri Lankans had been prevented from having their refugee claims reviewed because they were being held in an offshore detention centre on Christmas Island.
Mr Evans, who was immigration minister when the two men made their claims, rejected the idea the High Court's decision would prompt more asylum seekers who were denied refugee status from challenging the decision.
"I don't think that's going to be a huge issue. I'm not sure there's a great awareness of the finer points of Australian law in people fleeing persecution," he said.
"But it does go to the question of whether we can process claims quickly and efficiently and return those who have failed and those are the things that weight on the government's mind."
Although having not yet received the advice of the solicitor general, the acting Prime Minister said the decision did not undermine the policy of offshore processing. Nor would it affect the government's push to establish a asylum seeker processing centre in East Timor.
"It is worth noting none of this undermines the decision of offshore islands for the general processing arrangements in place," he said. "It does impact on the legal rights of asylum seekers to seek review of decisions and obviously we're going to have to take very careful advice about what that means."
AusAID to cut Timor advisory roles
Radio Australia - November 1, 2010
Australia will phase out more than a third of its adviser positions in East Timor over the next two years. Australia's aid agency, AusAID, will cut 29 of its 82 advisory positions in East Timor in a shake up that is aimed at making its aid more effective. The move follows similar cuts for Papua New Guinea and is part of a review of how advisers are used across the whole AusAID system.
Presenter: Liam Cochrane
Speakers: Zacarias da Costa, East Timorese foreign minister; Gary Lee, director of campaigns, AID/WATCH
Cochrane: Australia expects to spend A$69 million providing assistance to East Timor over the next year, but the way that aid is delivered will soon change.
Currently, 82 advisers provide what's known as 'technical assistance' to the East Timor government in the areas of finance, health, education, infrastructure and agriculture.
The idea is to build capacity in developing countries, but there have been criticisms that the money is being misspent on well paid Australian advisers, rather than more direct forms of aid.
Those criticisms have led to a review and on the weekend Australia's foreign minister, Kevin Rudd, announced 29 adviser positions in East Timor will be cut over the next two years. Zacarias da Costa is the foreign minister of East Timor.
Da Costa: As we build our own capacity and the capacity of our staff, the public servants, we understand that Australia is in the same view as us that those positions should be reduced and the focus should be concentrated on other areas where we still need technical support from Australia.
Cochrane: Australia says the money saved by reducing foreign advisers will be redirected to rural development and other priority programmes. Mr da Costa highlights one of the ongoing priorities.
Da Costa: Other areas which still need support include justice, for which we believe Australia is maintaining a level of support that goes in line with the priorities and needs of Timor-Leste.
Cochrane: Australia says, while there remains a need for well targeted technical assistance, the Australian government wants value-for-money across its aid programme. Gary Lee is the director of campaigns at the advocacy group AID/WATCH.
Lee: It is a welcome step but it is overdue in the sense that Australia has a historical reliance, I would say over reliance, on technical assistance and the use of advisers within the aid programme. And what this has translated to is that a lot of the aid money ends up back in the hands of Australian companies, consultants and advisers, and not enough money is directed to the delivery of basic services.
Cochrane: A similar review led to similar cuts in Papua New Guinea and AusAID says reviews of its technical assistance to the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu have been conducted and are now being finalised.
Gary Lee, from AID/WATCH, says that while the reviews are a positive step, there should be more accountability around the way aid performance is being measured.
Lee: I think it's also really important that these reviews are made publicly available as soon as possible to allow greater transparency in terms of what was covered in these reviews.
Cochrane: AusAID says a wider review of Australia's overall aid programme will be considered by the Australian government in due course.
Q&A: Why is land such a big issue in East Timor?
AlertNet - November 21, 2010
Thin Lei Win, Dili – East Timor, one of the world's youngest nations, is attempting to enact laws on land ownership eight years after gaining full independence.
While this is an important step towards establishing land rights for the Timorese, the process is "made complicated by the history of colonialism, occupation, resettlement and conflict", Oxfam's East Timor country director Paul Joicey says.
Civil society groups aren't happy with the current lack of land security and clarity on land ownership. But they also fear the draft land laws – now going through parliament – may exacerbate these problems and could even lead to conflict.
Here is some questions and answers on land issues in East Timor and the proposed legislation.
Why is land so contentious?
Few people in East Timor, a country with over a million people, have land titles. Statistics are hard to come by, but according to a September report from International Crisis Group (ICG), the Portuguese issued around 3,000 land titles and the Indonesians (who occupied the country from 1975 to 1999) issued some 45,000.
The lack of formal ownership is rooted in a long history of conflict and displacement since the Portuguese colonial era, which began in the sixteenth century and ended in the mid-1970s.
In 1999, after the Timorese people voted overwhelmingly for independence in a referendum, violence by pro-Jakarta militias drove more than half the population from their homes. Most recently, in 2006, up to 150,000 people were displaced – mainly in the capital Dili – due to factional violence.
Instability has led not only to the destruction of land records but also widespread illegal occupation. In many cases, displaced people have set up home in places considered government land under a 2003 law, which designated all state land during the Portuguese and Indonesian eras and all land abandoned by foreigners or those fleeing to West Timor as Timorese state land.
However, many communities now threatened with eviction by the government argue this law was not in place when they occupied the land in 1999.
ICG says as much as 97 percent of the country's land is believed to be governed by customary land systems based on social hierarchy and clans, in which ownership decisions are made by local traditional leaders who use mediation to resolve land disputes.
Such disputes – both between the state and the people, and between individuals – are a ticking time bomb, civil society groups say.
According to ICG, they tend to be political in nature and involve the notion of "justice" between those deemed to have fought for independence, thereby earning the right to be rewarded with land and housing rights, and those seen as collaborators with the Portuguese and the Indonesians and who possess most of the few land titles issued in the past.
What has been done to address the issue?
In October 2007, the US government development agency USAID launched the Ita Nia Rai (Our Land) programme, which was tasked with registering land claims and resolving land disputes. It had collected over 26,500 land claims in 10 districts as of Oct. 15.
The project encourages married couples to register joint claims, and has helped promote women's land rights. Civil society has praised its public information processes for being more extensive and inclusive than other donor and government initiatives.
However, it has been criticised for weak evaluation, and for not registering many claims made by groups rather than individuals. Local rights groups say registering individual claims in community areas could lead to conflict.
What are the draft land laws and what stage are they at?
There are four pieces of legislation in parliament relating to land.
The Civil Code – which will form the pillar of civil law in East Timor – includes a section that governs day-to-day land decisions such as the sale and lease of land.
The Transitional Land Law sets the scene for all land issues in the future, deciding who owns what land and in the case of conflicting claims, who has the strongest right to the land.
The two other pieces of legislation are the Expropriation Law and the Real Estate Finance Fund. The former would allow the state to take land for "public good" – for example, to build ports and other infrastructure – while the latter is to provide compensation as determined under the other laws.
All these laws are awaiting parliamentary approval, but civil society groups say the three focused specifically on land are unlikely to be passed before the wider Civil Code is approved. None are available in the local dialect Tetum.
There are also concerns over how the laws, once passed, will be implemented. Legal aid, education on land rights, community land use planning, social housing, and mediation and arbitration for land disputes are needed to ensure people's land rights are respected, campaigners say.