In March 2013 Australia drew down the last
members of the Australian Defence Force-led international forces that had been
deployed to stabilise Timor-Leste after a major security crisis in mid-2006
Australia's withdrawal followed largely peaceful
parliamentary and presidential elections in 2012, and the end of 13 years of
successive United Nations missions in December 2013.
The Timor-Leste that the International Stabilisation Force
left was very different to the one it encountered in 2006, when 38 people had been
killed, thousands of homes had been burnt and 150,000 people had been
displaced. It was also very different to the one that the Australian-led
International Force for East Timor (InterFET) encountered in the aftermath of
the 1999 referendum on the nation's independence.
After that vote, the Indonesian military and its supporting
militias engaged in a scorched-earth campaign, killing hundreds and destroying
almost three-quarters of all infrastructure and buildings.
Today, Timor-Leste is almost unrecognisable from those dark
days in 1999 and 2006. The government has access to significant oil and gas
revenues from the Timor Sea, with $US14.6 billion in its sovereign wealth
Petroleum Fund.
The government has used those revenues to return or resettle
the thousands of people displaced in 2006, to introduce social security schemes
for veterans of the resistance, the elderly and disabled, and single mothers,
and to make massive investments in infrastructure.
In 2010 the government started a scheme to bring electricity
across the country, and it has engaged in a concerted effort to decentralise
development projects to its rural areas. There has been a flurry of
construction, bringing in new health centres and hospitals. More children have
been immunised and more births are supervised by health-care professionals,
increasing life expectancy and reducing infant mortality rates.
The government has also built and rebuilt many schools, and
primary and secondary school enrolments have improved. As a result, the
proportion of the population living under the basic needs poverty line fell
from 49.9 per cent in 2007 to 41 per cent in 2010.
These improvements have been due to massive government
spending, driven by oil and gas earnings, which provided 97 per cent of the
state budget in 2012. The splash of cash has helped to stabilise the country
and has mitigated many of the likely causes of future conflict.
But Timor's pockets aren't so deep. Some projections
forecast oil and gas revenues will be exhausted by 2025, raising questions
about how the government will replace earnings, and whether the stability it
has bought will hold if it is not able to do so.
The government's spending has also created clear winners and
losers. When swearing in the new government in July 2012, President Taur Matan
Ruak lambasted the previous AMP government for failing to lessen socio-economic
inequality, noting that ''the divide in Timor is growing, and glaringly evident
in the capital Dili, with villas and five-star hotels overlooking unrepaired
roads''.
Matan Ruak's comments highlight the two Timor-Lestes: the
increasingly developed and urbane capital, Dili, where luxury cars and
high-rise apartments are now common, often underwritten by lucrative government
contracts; and the comparatively neglected and underdeveloped rural areas,
where more than three-quarters of the population rely on forms of
near-subsistence agriculture and meagre seasonal incomes to survive. The
yawning gap means that many Timorese people have not yet received a ''peace
dividend'' from the independent state that so many of them fought to create.
While some performance indicators have improved,
Timor-Leste's UN Human Development Index ranking fell from 2010 to 2013. It is
the third worst place in the world for stunted growth in children, with 58 per
cent of children experiencing restricted growth due to malnutrition. In 2011
the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights concluded that
''growth and development has not translated into sustained improvements in
standards of living, livelihoods and job creation. Poverty remains pervasive
and widespread.''
Rural poverty has been exacerbated by demographics: 45 per
cent of the population is under the age of 14 years and 62 per cent under the
age of 24 years, creating a ''youth bulge'' for which employment and other
economic opportunities need to be created. An increasingly large population of
young people have moved to the ''other'' Timor-Leste, Dili, to seek economic
opportunities, but have often failed to find them, which has exacerbated the
negative effects of high unemployment.
Disenchanted young people constitute a ready constituency
that can be encouraged to join gangs and engage in criminality and violence.
Many of those who inflamed the 2006 security crisis were members of youth
gangs, whose experience of poverty, unemployment and marginalisation led them
to feel that they have been ignored by their new state.
Australia should maintain a strong and enduring relationship
with Timor-Leste. Challenges to its economic development and stability remain
significant and warrant our ongoing attention.
The Australian National University is hosting a two day
Timor-Leste Update on November 28-29. More information can be found at http://bit.ly/TimorUpdate
- Dr Joanne Wallis is a lecturer in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the ANU's College of Asia and the Pacific.
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