Donors should focus on improving quality of Timorese people's lives instead of just physical security, local civil society group says
BANGKOK (AlertNet) – Donors to East Timor should allocate more resources to health and education and take a long-term view of the fragile country’s needs in order to make aid more effective, a local civil society organisation said at a three-day annual meeting between the government and donor countries.
La’o Hamutuk, set up a decade ago to monitor, analyse and report on the activities of East Timor’s decision-makers and international development partners, also said donors needed to understand the country’s historical context.
“Over the past decade, international experts have defined problems or prescribed solutions for Timor-Leste’s (East Timor) people without understanding why things here are the way they are,” La’o Hamutuk said in a statement distributed at the meeting.
“The legacies of colonialism, war, occupation, trauma, religion, poverty and underdevelopment are the fundamental components of the country’s current fragility,” it said, adding international actions over the past 500 years were responsible for such legacies.
The organisation asked development partners to consider ongoing impunity such as the release of an indicted criminal following pressure from Indonesia, the overreliance on a limited pool of petrol reserves which is being used rapidly and soaring inflation – estimated at 15 percent – when determining aid programmes.
It also asked donor countries and organisations to focus on improving the quality of people’s lives instead of just physical security.
“The great majority of the more than 2,000 Timorese children under five who die every year are victims of avoidable or curable conditions, while homicide took only 39 lives in Timor-Leste in 2010,” it said.
The organisation said long-term investments in education, preventive health care, sustainable agriculture and the non-oil light industry, as well as reduced dependency on imports and equitable distribution of wealth, can help prevent social injustice and disintegration.
(Editing by Rebekah Curtis)
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