Timor-Leste: UN continues transfer of functions to national police

The United Nations has handed back policing responsibilities to Timor-Leste in a fifth district as part of the gradual transfer of the functions it assumed in 2006 after a wave of deadly violence shook the newly independent country.

At a ceremony yesterday attended by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Deputy Special Representative Finn Reske-Nielsen and the Director General of Timor-Leste’s Secretariat of State for Security, Guilhermina Ribeiro, Ainaro in the central highlands joined the four other regions where the national police have resumed primary responsibility since last May.

UN Police will maintain their presence in the districts to monitor, advise and support the national police, including in the area of human rights protection. Ainaro, with a population of 54,000 and located some 80 kilometres south of Dili, the capital, produces organic coffee.

The UN Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT), set up in 2006 after dozens of people were killed and 155,000 others – or about 15 per cent of the population – were driven from their homes in an eruption of violence partly due to regional tensions, currently has nearly 1,500 police and 30 military liaison officers on the ground.

It replaced several earlier missions in the small South-East Asian country that the UN shepherded to independence in 2002 after it voted to separate from Indonesia.