By Charles Scheiner

As described elsewhere in this book, people from around the world came together in solidarity with Timor-Leste’s people to achieve the civil and political rights promised to them by international treaties and conventions. We were moved by the horrendous human rights violations perpetrated by the Indonesian state and its armed forces, often abetted by diplomats and arms manufacturers from our own countries. We celebrated the victory of self-determination in the long-delayed 1999 referendum.

However, in this globalised world with powerful international forces and actors, self-determination for a small, new country requires more than political independence, and the work of solidarity activists did not end in 1999. This article will discuss one example of how international activists joined with Timor-Leste’s people to help their young nation navigate through challenging waters toward social, economic and civic justice for all of its citizens.

La’o Hamutuk, the Timor-Leste Institute for Development Monitoring and Analysis, is an independent, non-partisan Timor-Leste non-governmental organisation (NGO) that has continued such solidarity. The organisation researches, analyses, advocates and does public education about policies and programs of international institutions and of Timor-Leste’s government. La’o Hamutuk works to facilitate factual information to strengthen human rights, solidarity, social and economic justice, and gender equality.

The author has worked for La’o Hamutuk since 2001, and this chapter draws on personal experience and recollections as well as documentary material. I hope that it will be useful for activists in other struggles and periods of history.

A new organisation for a nation in formation

After the 5 May 1999 agreement made the popular consultation both imminent and real, activists in many countries discussed how they could help ensure that it would be a free and fair act of self-determination based on the wishes of Timor-Leste’s people. Given the quarter-century of Indonesian-inflicted terror, compounded by continuing violence from Indonesian forces and their proxies, this was far from guaranteed. Some activists decided to become impartial observers of the referendum, trusting the people of the country to make their own decisions. The largest such effort, the International Federation for East Timor Observer Project (IFET-OP), recruited and trained 125 UN-accredited observers from 20 countries, deploying teams in each of the 13 districts of Timor-Leste (Scheiner and Sexton 2019).

In the weeks after the results were announced, Indonesian-directed militia destroyed most of the homes and infrastructure in Timor-Leste and displaced hundreds of thousands of people, forcing almost all international observers (including those from IFET-OP) to evacuate Timor-Leste. Since IFET-OP had planned to stay in the country for a few transitional months, the human and material resources it had assembled provided a foundation for continuing solidarity.

In late 1999 and early 2000, former observers and activists from several countries visited Timor-Leste to ask people what they needed now from international solidarity, which for years had supported their call for an internationally-supervised referendum on self-determination, which they had just won. To paraphrase the response of many people:

International activists looked around the world for NGOs dealing with similar contexts and perspectives but were unable to find any. However, they responded to this request, and founded La’o Hamutuk – solidarity activists and the Timorese civil society “walking together” – on 20 May 2000 as the Timor-Leste Institute for Reconstruction Monitoring and Analysis, with the intention to monitor the activities of international organisations in Timor-Leste during the UN transitional administration, and to strengthen South-South solidarity and share models of alternative development. Its early reports had titles like “The World Bank in East Timor” and “Funding East Timor’s Reconstruction.”

What La’o Hamutuk is

La’o Hamutuk’s vision is that

La’o Hamutuk’s first office was in Bekusi, Dili, and the first staff were IFET-OP observers and young Timorese activists. A few years later, La’o Hamutuk opened a field office in Baucau for a short time, and the Dili office moved to Faról and then to Bebora, where it was from 2009 to 2015, when it relocated to Bairo Sentrál.

Since its founding, La’o Hamutuk has had a collective organisational structure, with no director or hierarchy. All researchers, both Timorese (the majority) and international, receive the same pay. Ideas and work are discussed in regular staff meetings, which also make policy, administrative, and personnel decisions by consensus.

At the start, all staff shared both program and administrative responsibilities, although after a few years, specialists were hired for finances and some other tasks. The staff collective chooses two of its members as rotating coordinators. An Advisory Board of civil society activists (more recently, most members are former La’o Hamutuk staffers) provides general guidance and helps resolve questions when the staff collective cannot achieve consensus.

La’o Hamutuk hoped to model an alternative to hierarchical patterns learned from Indonesia and Portugal and exemplified by most international agencies and NGOs, and to their unequal treatment of international and Timorese staff. Unfortunately, two decades later, it remains the only national NGO in Timor-Leste without a hierarchy, which has strengthened mutual respect among its staff.

The organisation tries to have women as the majority of its staff, which it has not always been able to achieve, although it does better than nearly all Timorese NGOs. La’o Hamutuk staffers often provide gender balance for public events. Currently, male staffers decline requests to speak at programs that don’t include women as invited speakers.

In recent years, La’o Hamutuk’s staff has varied from eight to 12 people, and only one or two are not Timorese.

International staffers, many of whom were activists and IFET-OP observers, have come from the USA, UK, Japan, Indonesia, Australia, Brazil, the Netherlands and France. They make an initial two-year commitment, and most stay longer. Although their financial compensation is lower than it would be at an international agency, they gain a lot from their experience at La’o Hamutuk.

Timorese staff usually stay longer, often 5-10 years, and continue to defend social justice after “graduating” from La’o Hamutuk. They have become Ministers, Parliamentarians, diplomats, UN staff, lawyers, government advisors and leaders of other civil society organisations.

Until late 2002, La’o Hamutuk joined regular meetings of international and local NGO leaders. It stopped going after other international NGO participants insisted that their foreign staffers should not pay the same wage tax as their Timorese colleagues. Until then, La’o Hamutuk had been considered as both an international and a local NGO; after that, it chose to be only a local organisation.

Although IFET-OP provided the seed money, La’o Hamutuk soon needed other sources of funding, although the options are self-limited, as expressed in their annual reports:

That policy, combined with staff salary equality, usually precludes accepting “volunteers” from foreign-government-sponsored programs, although the organisation has received unpaid interns from Timorese and foreign universities.[1]

Unrestricted donor money was plentiful for about a decade, but became scarcer as international funders’ attention has moved elsewhere, especially after aid cuts in 2025. Nevertheless, La’o Hamutuk is one of the few Timor-Leste NGOs that does not rely on money from the Timor-Leste government, remaining unconstrained to speak truth to power.

An evolving role

La’o Hamutuk initially intended to inform and empower Timorese people, but it soon became clear that well-intentioned internationals coming to Timor-Leste during the UN Transitional Administration, many of whom had barely heard of the country before 1999, also wanted to be informed. For a while, the organisation ran a bookstore with English-language materials about Timor-Leste, and it continues to publish online in English as well as in Tetum.

Two days after independence was restored in 2002, about a hundred Timorese leaders and solidarity activists gathered in Dili to discuss the Role of International Solidarity after Independence. In my talk as IFET coordinator, I said

After independence was restored, La’o Hamutuk broadened its monitoring to include the government of Timor-Leste as well as international institutions. It changed “reconstruction” to “development” in its name, becoming the “Timor-Leste Institute for Development Monitoring and Analysis.”

Since its founding, La’o Hamutuk has helped Timorese people understand the roles and motives of international actors, and tried to encourage the UN and their local personnel to be more aware and responsive to people’s needs. Although the last UN peacekeeping mission left in 2012 and international agencies are much less influential now, La’o Hamutuk continues to engage with them. La’o Hamutuk has attended nearly every annual conference of donors (“Development Partners”) to Timor-Leste, whether overseas or in Dili. It presents when invited, but always distributes a written memo to the participants, encouraging international donors to empower Timorese people, rather than to reinforce dependency or debt.

La’o Hamutuk’s research on donor projects in Timor-Leste kept finding the same shortcomings: disregarding local knowledge, insufficient community involvement, excluding women, disrespecting Timorese staff, lack of sustainability and poor coordination. In 2007, the organisation decided it was a waste of its energies to keep learning the same lessons – which the global aid effectiveness movement was realising at the same time. The organisation shifted its focus from particular donors and projects to international systems that affect Timor-Leste’s people, such as global trade, debt, human rights and the petroleum economy.[3]

Communications media and activities

La’o Hamutuk uses a variety of means to disseminate its observations, findings, and recommendations; links to relevant materials are in the reference list below.

It has organised many “public meetings,” usually with a panel including representatives from an institution and/or government and from civil society. Presentations are followed by energetic discussions. Although most such meetings have been in Dili, a growing number are held in rural areas where three-fourths of Timorese people live.

For many years, the La’o Hamutuk Bulletin, originally published in Indonesian and English, was the largest circulation publication in Timor-Leste, and came out 6-8 times per year. In 2008 the Bulletin switched from Indonesian to Tetum, and lately has foregone the English version. As more people turn to online media, the Bulletin has become annual.

Four-page, illustrated Surat Popular pamphlets try to make complex issues understandable to a broader audience, based on popular education pedagogy. Each one includes questions to guide local community discussion and action.

The organisation’s half-hour, Tetum-language Radio Igualdade program is broadcast on community radio stations across the country, making information available to rural communities. Each program addresses a particular topic, interviewing knowledgeable people from Government, civil society, Parliament, academia and elsewhere.

La’o Hamutuk bases its credibility on impartial, evidence-based analysis; it gets most of its data from official reports. It often creates graphs to help people understand what the numbers mean. These are used in many ways, including the regularly-updated “Rights and Sustainability” presentation, which is shown to many audiences.[4]

The website https://www.laohamutuk.org is a comprehensive reference, with more than 18,000 files, and is accessed by around 7,000 people every day. In addition to materials produced by the organisation, it includes documents from government and international organisations – and is easier to use and more permanent than many of their own websites.[5] The blog https://laohamutuk.blogspot.com, usually in Tetum and English, conveys short versions of research to an online audience. Most people in Timor-Leste use Facebook, and La’o Hamutuk’s page https://www.facebook.com/laohamutukTL contains current events, but as it is not archival or structured, the organisation prefers other media for disseminating information.

La’o Hamutuk gives trainings and presentations for civil society, journalists, public servants, local communities, academics, visiting delegations, overseas conferences, government and international agencies and international volunteers. The organisation is often asked to present at trainings organised by others.

La’o Hamutuk is proactive in sharing its analyses. Parliamentary committees and party caucuses often ask it to present on pending legislation or state budgets, but if there’s no invitation it writes unsolicited submissions or open letters and summarises them for its blog and the media. The organisation has given written testimony to UN and other international agencies, and to the Australian Parliament. It frequently meets with Timorese leaders from the President down, as well as with ambassadors and representatives of international agencies.

For several years, La’o Hamutuk conducted research and public education with the International Budget Partnership for the Open Budget Survey, as well as for some anonymous global surveys, with the goal of making internationally-published information about Timor-Leste more accurate.

La’o Hamutuk has presented many papers to conferences of the Timor-Leste Studies Association (TLSA) in Dili, Portugal and Brazil, and works to facilitate communication between the academic world and Timorese civil society. In addition to TLSA, La’o Hamutuk staffers write for international journals and books, and participate in other conferences.

La’o Hamutuk is one of the strongest Timor-Leste research and advocacy NGOs, and it often plays a leading role in civil society coalitions, including the NGO Forum, National Alliance for an International Tribunal, sustainable agriculture networks, the Core Group on Transparency, the Movement Against the Occupation of the Timor Sea, Human Rights Defenders, and the Rede ba Rai land rights network. It also engages in several international networks, and with solidarity groups for Timor-Leste and for struggles elsewhere.

Local and international journalists often misunderstand or misreport the organisation’s findings, due to ignorance or intention. In recent years, it has preferred to write its own articles and op-eds, although it often holds press conferences or is interviewed by journalists.

La’o Hamutuk has officially observed every election in Timor-Leste, submitting reports to the election authorities. It organises debates, sends questionnaires to parties and candidates, and publishes information to help voters decide based on issues and the law.

Solidarity is reciprocal

Part of La’o Hamutuk’s mission is to help Timor-Leste learn from the rest of the world, especially from similar countries. It brought Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) representatives from Brazil to Timor-Leste to discuss how popular education can support social change, and invited Nicaraguan activists to discuss gender-based violence. La’o Hamutuk has also hosted activists from Argentina, Ecuador, Sri Lanka, West Papua and many other places.

Exchanges go both ways. The organisation has sent a group from Timor-Leste civil society to Nigeria to see the impacts of oil and gas exploitation; and sent delegations to learn from models and struggles in Cuba, Brazil and the Philippines, as well as to many international conferences. In addition to meeting with international visitors and ‘volunteers’ in Timor-Leste, La’o Hamutuk has shared Timor-Leste’s experiences in India, Burma, Mozambique, Thailand, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and many other countries, including in Europe and the USA. La’o Hamutuk is an active member of the OilWatch international network working to prevent the harmful effects of oil and gas exploitation in tropical forest countries, and has joined global OilWatch conferences in Ecuador and Colombia. In 2010, it hosted OilWatch activists from Indonesia, Burma, Thailand and the Philippines in Dili.

La’o Hamutuk played a key role in organising international solidarity conferences in Dili on the 10th and 20th anniversaries of the 1999 referendum.

In 2003, La’o Hamutuk joined 50 million people worldwide to try to prevent the U.S. from invading Iraq. Ten years later, as part of a global day of action, La’o Hamutuk and other human rights groups marched to the US embassy to ask the U.S. to close its illegal prison in Guantanamo, Cuba.

Although the Timor-Leste government endorses self-determination for Western Sahara, it is silent on other independence struggles. Civil society applies the Constitutional principle to support self-determination more consistently, and La’o Hamutuk has often spoken out in support of self-determination and human rights in West Papua and Palestine.

As Burma’s democratic space began to open in 2012, civil society there invited La’o Hamutuk to present about managing nonrenewable resource wealth. Prior to that, the organisation had shared experiences with Burmese activists, organised solidarity actions in Dili, and met with Burmese refugees in Thailand. A few years later,  called on Timor-Leste and ASEAN to condemn repression against Rohingya people, urged Timor-Leste’s government to oppose the 2021 military coup, and supported them after Myanmar expelled a Timor-Leste diplomat in 2023.

La’o Hamutuk also participates in campaigns to protect activists from state repression, including many in Indonesia, Bernard Collaery in Australia and Gubad Ibadoghlu in Azerbaijan.

Issues addressed by La’o Hamutuk

La’o Hamutuk’s primary focus is to improve the quality of life for people in Timor-Leste, especially the most vulnerable. This section summarises a few key issues; others, as well as more in-depth information, are on La’o Hamutuk’s website.

On the economic side, La’o Hamutuk looks beyond the overused GDP indicator to understand how most people live, and advocates for policies which can produce sustainable, diverse, equitable livelihoods as well as public services which will endure after the limited oil and gas wealth is used up. The organisation promotes transparency and accountability, and frequently engages with legislative and budgetary processes, urging greater funding for education, health care and agriculture, and less for large infrastructure projects with dubious benefits.

La’o Hamutuk has long advocated for better transparency and foresight in managing revenues from oil and gas, which have financed more than 80% of state spending to date and displaced agriculture, small industry and other productive sectors from much of the economy. After helping develop relevant legislation in 2004-2005, the organisation continues to monitor, educate and speak out on the Petroleum Fund, State Budget, and related processes (Scheiner 2021).

La’o Hamutuk has become a voice for the environment, partially to fill a void in Timorese civil society. It maintains an online registry of environmental licensing documents[6] and often comment on proposed legislation and projects. In October 2010, people in nearly every country held actions on climate change; La’o Hamutuk organised a march and mangrove planting. It has also attended COP and Social Forum conferences, and continues to press Timor-Leste’s government to act more forcefully to prevent and adapt to climate change, and to help people understand how the country’s petroleum operations, potential carbon capture project, and diesel-fueled electricity system damage the global climate.

Since 1999, La’o Hamutuk and others in civil society have steadfastly insisted that Indonesian perpetrators of crimes against humanity in Timor-Leste be brought to justice, and that governments which enabled them also be held accountable. It organised countless protests, letters and publications, met with dozens of UN officials and diplomats, and helped create the National Alliance for an International Tribunal, while reporting on flawed CAVR, CTF and “reparations” processes. When indicted criminal Maternus Bere was freed due to political pressure in 2009, La’o Hamutuk and others protested, including bringing flowers and candles to the Indonesian Embassy where he was given sanctuary.[7]

Although La’o Hamutuk still believes that impunity is unacceptable, it no longer prioritises this issue because of lack of interest from most Timor-Leste leaders and donor-driven shifts in focus in other civil society groups. Nevertheless, La’o Hamutuk continues to advocate for accountability and human rights with the UN and other agencies, and in 2012 was the first NGO in the world to provide video testimony to the UN Human Rights Council. It also joins written and video submissions to the UN’s Universal Periodic Reviews of human rights in Timor-Leste, urging that all human rights, including economic ones, be respected.

Together with the Rede ba Rai land rights network, La’o Hamutuk successfully opposed land legislation which would have violated community rights, and continues to support people who are displaced from their land.

The majority of Timorese families support themselves by subsistence farming, although this gets little attention or respect from those in power. La’o Hamutuk continues to press for more investment in agriculture, food sovereignty, agricultural processing industries and avoidance of GMOs and “green revolution” technologies, and has published several reports (La’o Hamutuk 2021).

Since its founding, La’o Hamutuk has been a leader of what became MKOTT – the Movement Against the Occupation of the Timor Sea – which urged Australia to respect Timor-Leste’s sovereignty by agreeing to a fair maritime boundary. It encouraged protests at Australian embassies around the world, supported Australian activists to form the Timor Sea Justice Campaign, gave oral or written testimony to a dozen Australian government inquiries, and supported the successful campaigns for a maritime boundary treaty and to end Australia’s prosecution of attorney Bernard Collaery.

In 2008, La’o Hamutuk wrote and published a book on the Greater Sunrise gas field and proposed LNG plant on the south coast of Timor-Leste, which remains the only in-depth, fact-based, balanced publication on the topic (La’o Hamutuk 2008). The then-Secretary of State for Natural Resources spoke at the launch and bought 100 copies for his staff. Unfortunately, many Timorese leaders and commentators still believe the myth that Greater Sunrise and the Tasi Mane project will underwrite the nation’s future economy (the state has already spent more than a billion dollars on them, although this is less than one-tenth of the estimated capital cost). La’o Hamutuk has serious doubts about the project, and continues to urge that an impartial, objective, comprehensive, public analysis be undertaken of its financial, social, environmental and economic costs, benefits and risks before proceeding further. It also urges more realistic assessments of possible benefits from other prospective oil, gas, or carbon capture projects.

More broadly, the organisation tries to help people inside and outside Timor-Leste understand the negative consequences of depending on money from extracting finite, non-renewable resources (the ‘resource curse’), which cause decision-makers and commentators to neglect pathways to economic sovereignty, sustainability or diversification. With oil and gas revenues ending in 2025, more people are paying attention (Scheiner 2022).

Conclusion

La’o Hamutuk is now older than the majority of people in Timor-Leste. Although it has not won every campaign it undertook, it has significantly improved public understanding and evidence-based decision-making. More people realise that dreams of a perpetual petroleum windfall may be unachievable because of economic or physical realities. Some policies and laws are better because of La’o Hamutuk’s advocacy, and some damaging proposals have been averted.

These successes would not have been possible without the participation of international solidarity activists, many of whom were thrilled with the opportunity to be close to a nation while it invented itself, and to learn from their Timorese peers.

Many international activists who have worked at La’o Hamutuk had benefitted from broader formal education and wider experience than people who grew up during war and occupation. International staffers mentor their Timorese colleagues on technical skills, while learning about their culture, history and lived experiences. The equitable solidarity relationship intrinsic to the NGO nurtures honest dialogue and mutual education.

Furthermore, Timor-Leste’s leaders and people appreciate those who supported their nation during difficult times, and international solidarity activists have enhanced “malae privilege,” which gives them more access to officials than most Timor-Leste citizens have.

Through La’o Hamutuk, they have tried to use that access to amplify the voices of the most vulnerable and ignored Timorese people, more than 40% of whom still live in poverty. As lutas continuam!