Rising From The Ashes Un Peacebuilding In Timor Leste

This book, Rising from the Ashes: UN Peacebuilding in Timor-Leste, provides an in-depth look into the UN's first experiment in governing and building peace in the aftermath of conflict, using East Timor as a case study. It examines how the Timorese have progressed after the UN left and the challenges that lie ahead. The book is covered in two parts: in the first part, the book examines the UN's role after it entered East Timor in 1999 as the de facto government; and in the second part, the book examines how Timor-Leste has progressed in peacebuilding after the UN's withdrawal in 2012.Rising from the Ashes: UN Peacebuilding in Timor-Leste is based on the author's first-hand experience working in the UN as it restored law and order and built a state in a country without a government, any infrastructure, or human resources. The book argues that peacebuilding is a long-term endeavor and is a work in progress in Timor-Leste, based on the good foundations laid by the UN. However, like many other developing countries, Timor-Leste has enormous challenges to address; but it also has oil resources and a young population. Its future success will depend on how its oil wealth is managed and distributed, whether it is able to bridge the urban-rural divisions in the country, provide employment for its burgeoning population, and progress economically. Last, but not least, its future success will also depend importantly, on how its leadership deals with past, namely, the continuing intra-elite divisions that are a legacy of its troubled history. They have to transcend past divisions and unite Timorese society for the future development of the country.The book ends with a set of recommendations for Timor-Leste and for the region, namely members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

This book, Rising from the Ashes: UN Peacebuilding in Timor-Leste, provides an in-depth look into the UN's first experiment in governing and building peace in the aftermath of conflict, using East Timor as a case study. It examines how the Timorese have progressed after the UN left and the challenges that lie ahead. The book is covered in two parts: in the first part, the book examines the UN's role after it entered East Timor in 1999 as the de facto government; and in the second part, the book examines how Timor-Leste has progressed in peacebuilding after the UN's withdrawal in 2012. Rising from the Ashes: UN Peacebuilding in Timor-Leste is based on the author's first-hand experience working in the UN as it restored law and order and built a state in a country without a government, any infrastructure, or human resources. The book argues that peacebuilding is a long-term endeavor and is a work in progress in Timor-Leste, based on the good foundations laid by the UN. However, like many other developing countries, Timor-Leste has enormous challenges to address; but it also has oil resources and a young population. Its future success will depend on how its oil wealth is managed and distributed, whether it is able to bridge the urban-rural divisions in the country, provide employment for its burgeoning population, and progress economically. Last, but not least, its future success will also depend importantly, on how its leadership deals with past, namely, the continuing intra-elite divisions that are a legacy of its troubled history. They have to transcend past divisions and unite Timorese society for the future development of the country. The book ends with a set of recommendations for Timor-Leste and for the region, namely members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Seeing the role of transitional justice as an area of contestation, this book focuses on the principle of equality guaranteed in the access to transitional justice mechanisms. By raising women's experiences in dealing with the law and policies as well as the implications of community and family practices during post-conflict situations, the book shows how these mechanisms may have been implemented mechanically, without considering the different intersections of discrimination, the public and private divides that exist in the local context or the stereotypes and values of international and national actors. The book argues that without unpacking the barriers in the administration of transitional justice, the different mechanisms that are implemented in a post-conflict situation may set a higher threshold for the participation of women. Moreover, by taking into account women's perceptions of justice, it further argues that scholars have paid insufficient attention to the welfare structures that are produced after a conflict, particularly the pensions of veterans. Going beyond the focus on sexual violence, a relationship between the violations and post-conflict economic justice may have longer-term consequences for women since it perpetuates their inequality and lack of recognition in times of peace. The use of transitional justice may thus exacerbate the invisibility of and discrimination against certain sections of the population. Inspired by the work of Hannah Arendt and based on extensive field research in Timor-Leste, the book has larger implications for the overarching debate on the social consequences of transitional justice.

With a range of case studies from every continent, the contributors to this book analyze the challenges that arise for states living with much larger neighbors, and the policies they develop to account for this asymmetry. Bringing together the perspectives of bilateral relations and the study of small states, this book analyzes a range of scenarios where one or more smaller countries must manage relations with a much larger neighbor or neighbors, from the perspective of the smaller countries. Each case presents different priorities, depending on the relationship between the states concerned, while highlighting the commonalities across the various scenarios. The range of cases and contributors is wide and diverse, with examples including Togo’s relationship with Ghana, Mongolia’s with China, and Colombia’s with Brazil – as well as more widely known examples such as Canada and the United States, or Australia and New Zealand. A valuable resource for scholars and students of international relations, and public policy of small- and medium-sized states.

This book explores the role of actors in determining transitional justice in peacebuilding contexts. In recent decades, transitional justice mechanisms and processes have been introduced to a variety of settings, becoming widely regarded as essential elements in the ‘peacebuilding toolbox’. While it has increasingly been suggested that transitional justice is imposed by neo-imperial actors with little regard for the needs and cultures of local populations, evidence suggests that dismissing these policies as neo-imperial or neo-liberal impositions would result in grossly overlooking their dynamics, which involve a whole range of relevant actors operating at multiple levels. This book interrogates this theme through empirical analysis of three sites of peacebuilding that have seen extensive international involvement: Kosovo, East Timor and Afghanistan. It proposes a novel framework for analysing and approaching transitional justice in peacebuilding that disaggregates three broad sets of actors operating at different levels in relevant processes: external actors (international and regional levels), transitional justice promoters (local, national, international and transnational levels), and transitional regimes (national and local levels). The book argues that transitional justice in peacebuilding must be conceived of as actor-contingent and malleable due to the significance of agency and (inter)actions of key categories of actors throughout peacebuilding transition. This book will be of interest to students and practitioners of transitional justice, peacebuilding, law, and International Relations.

Peace as Government: The Will to Normalize Timor-Leste brings a problematization of post-conflict reconstruction processes by bridging two theoretical approaches that are often placed in diametrical opposite epistemic poles – the analytical tools developed by Michel Foucault and the English School. The author argues that peace operations have a very precise function in the international scenario – the fostering and the maintenance of a (neo)liberal order in the international society. He evinces that this particular function of peace operations is developed through the will to normalize post-conflict states and their populations. In order to advance his argument, the author analyses the United Nations’ (UN) engagement with Timor-Leste, since no other country had the large number of peace operations, the wide range of spheres of engagement or the depth of involvement that the UN had in Timor-Leste. The author evinces that this will to normalize Timor-Leste is rendered operational though the mechanism of government, the conduct of conducts in a Foucauldian sense, functioning in two levels. At the international level, the government operates through discipline, rewarding and punishing the Timorese state seeking to shape its behaviors as an individual in the international society. At the national level, the government operates through biopolitics, which functions through the attempt of shaping the life-supporting processes of the Timorese population.

Established to help people jump start their lives and economy after over a half century of conflict, the South Sudanese microcredit sector collapsed in 2012 to the detriment of some 80,000 participants. This book is an account of the ambitious launch and premature downfall of the Southern Sudanese microcredit industry.

This book analyses conflict patterns in independent East Timor. It argues that understanding the role of local level actors and the dynamics of sub-national conflict is integral to understanding national level conflict and the contours of contemporary political power.