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Timor Leste was established as a country in 1999 when the Indonesians relinquished sovereignty and their departing military units and associated militias left most of the educational infrastructure in ruins. Civil disorder flared again in 2006 and the Government invited international military and reconstruction aid agencies in to restore order and reinvigorate development. The Inspectorate was established by law in 2008 to improve the quality and accountability of the school education system. The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between a national language policy that favours Portuguese and Tetun, and the establishment and administration of the Inspectorate of the Ministry of Education in Timor Leste.

The author was embedded in the Inspectorate between January and June 2009. During this period he conducted ethnographic analysis of the administration of two of the largest regions prior to helping develop the School Inspector's Manual and a strategic plan for the Inspectorate. This report was derived from those experiences.

The Inspectorate in the Ministry of Education, led by an Inspector General, has a symbiotic relationship with what is termed in this paper as the “Schools Directorate” led by a director general. Although the Inspectorate is required to improve the quality and accountability of all services provided by the Schools Directorate, a close symbiosis is encouraged between the sister bureaucracies by the Minister of Education, resulting in serious goal displacement in both organisations, degrees of confusion and paralysis in implementation. Four major reasons are identified. The Minister co‐manages the Schools Directorate and the Inspectorate has a chief executive officer. Formal communications in the Ministry are conducted in Portuguese, although very few are competent in this language. Regional directorates and regional inspectorates are required to collaborate closely in review and development planning, while the activities of the latter are funded and administered by the former. The cultural norms of conflict‐avoidance in a post‐conflict context are all pervasive in a setting of scarce resources, to the point where no one is ever fired, even for corruption.

This paper reports baseline research into the development of the Inspectorate and the Ministry of Education.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relevance of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in East Timor and proposes a set of ESD indicators to be implemented in the formal education sector.

A detailed analysis of relevant literature concerning national development plans (Republica Democrática de Timor-Leste, 2011), literature centred in East Timor and international perspectives about ESD principles, policies and values (UN reports) was carried, in order to examine the relevance of ESD in East Timor and to assist the selection of a set of ESD indicators. These indicators are proposed in order to assess and monitor if the current national policies, educational programmes, secondary school content, learning goals and activities in formal education express concerns related with ESD promotion in terms of specific curricular themes, learning characteristics, learning resources, skills, values and attitudes.

This paper argues that the East Timor government has intentions in ESD promotion and implementation. Thus, ESD indicators could be helpful in assessment of new curricular practices. However, even though ESDI may indicate that secondary school programmes, content, learning goals or activities are aligned with ESD principles, it is also important to assess if they then contribute effectively to sustainable development.

The case study of East Timor adds to the literature about the current interests of young countries such as this in progressing towards a sustainable future, starting from the selection and implementation of ESD indicators in the current curriculum reform. If it is successful, ESD will contribute to transforming not only education but also the quality of life of the East Timorese.

Tourism development is often seen as a tool to empower rural and peripheral communities. Problems can arise if there is an imbalance in the power relationship between local communities and external actors promoting development, including investors and Non Government Organisations (NGOs). This chapter examines the issues of leadership and power related to a hotel project operated by a private company in a small rural town in Timor-Leste. While there was initially substantial support for the project, the private company leading the project failed to adequately engage with community leaders creating feeling of loss of authority. Moreover, the members of the community who were not directly associated with the project felt that there was a gap between promises made to the community and the actual outcomes.

The emergence of intrastate conflicts has not only laid bare the limitations of ‘liberal peace’ strategies but has also raised questions on the utility of such ‘top-down’ strategies in societies that use traditional methods for conflict resolution and transformation. Such limitations in liberal peace strategies have also generated interest in the utility of traditional conflict resolution and transformation methods, especially in the Global South. Using Volker Boege's framework of traditional conflict transformation and employing case studies from Papua New Guinea (PNG), Rwanda and Timor-Leste, this chapter argues why traditional methods of conflict resolution and transformation still bear relevance in societies where culture and custom play an important role in social harmony and peace. By discussing these cases and using the lessons learnt from their discussion, the chapter concludes that even with their apparent utility and use in ‘hybrid’ models of peace, such traditional methods should be employed with care and after understanding of various social, cultural and historical variables.

The purpose of this paper is to study the just and highly praised Timorese nationalism leading to independence, deal, in particular, with the attitude of the East Timorese and raise questions about their national identity.

This paper is largely based on an anthropological and political science research with interviews.

East Timor’s nationalism is unique and formerly linked to Liurai chiefs. Political nationalism is discussed in the third part of the paper.

This research is the first of its kind. East Timor research is mainly centered in the period 1975–1999 of Indonesian occupation. The concepts nationalism, identity and politics are under-researched concepts in East Timor. There the political system is unique.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of ethical leadership on employee performance, with the employee engagement and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) as mediating variables.

The design of this study was to ascertain the predictive generalizations truth of the theory. The population in this study was all employees of non-star hotels in Sarbagita area of Bali.

First, ethical leadership does not have a significant effect on employee performance, where the increase in leadership value is not able to provide a significant improvement in the performance of non-star hotel employees in the Sarbagita area of Bali. Second, employee engagement is able to mediate ethical leadership in improving employee performance. Third, the OCB will be able to play a role in mediating the influence of ethical leadership on employee performance if it passes the mediating role of employee engagement first.

The inconsistencies of the previous study results provide evidence and opportunities for this study to review by including mediating variables on ethical leadership and employee performance relationship. The studied variable as a mediating variable is employee engagement. In addition to employee engagement, this study also included the OCB variable as a mediating variable. Several previous studies have identified the influence of ethical leadership, employee engagement and OCB in improving employee performance in separate research models, so there is still a gap for further research.

Innovation is a fundamental element for developing countries’ development. For instance, the innovation process should be integral to a country’s development plan for it to achieve high standard socio-economic development. For this reason, the global development agenda in the contemporary era underline innovation as a crucial issue to be addressed within development assistance programs. The Global North as traditional donors predominantly contend that innovation should be supported by high private sector development (PSD), and therefore, emphasizes this agenda to be delivered through their foreign aid schemes. However, this character differs considerably as compared to new emerging donors with insufficient PSD capacity, such as Indonesia. This paper aims to examine Indonesia’s technical assistance (TAC) to Timor-Leste and scrutinizes whether or not it supports the innovation development of the receiving country.

This study used a qualitative method by conducting a literature review, document tracing and depth interview with Indonesia’s South–South Cooperation National Coordinating Team.

Based on this study, it can be proven that Indonesia’s TAC has the ability to support innovation development in Timor-Leste as a least developed country. This is because Indonesia’s TAC is directed toward knowledge sharing and technology transfer that are needed by Timor-Leste. Other supporting conditions, such as similarity in the process of development, shared principles and solidarity ties among developing countries, have also created a more decent environment for aid delivery. Thus, aid initiatives among developing countries must remain to be supported as key to attain mutual progress and collective self-reliance.

This study shows that Indonesia as an emerging economic has the capability to support innovation development of other developing countries. It was a new area of study but has a lot of potential to be explored such as effectiveness and interests.

Timor-Leste is a small, island country situated between South East Asia, Australia, and the Pacific, where it shares a unique mix of climates from all three neighboring regions (Kirono, 2010). The country achieved independence in 2002 having suffered over 400 years of colonialism and foreign occupation, first by the Portuguese and then by the Indonesians (Sandlund et al., 2001). The post-referendum troubles in 1999 left Timor-Leste with seriously damaged infrastructure and relatively little economic activity (Hill, 2001). However, since 1999, the country has made significant steps forward and despite some upheaval in 2006 has significantly developed in terms of infrastructure and economic activity. Nonetheless, Timor-Leste, as a Small Island Developing State (SIDS) also has a number of other vulnerabilities and challenges to contend with including its mountainous region, relative isolation, dependence upon agriculture, and high levels of unemployment. Timor-Leste has a land mass of 14,874km² with a population of approximately 1 million, which is rapidly increasing (Government of Timor-Leste, 2010). The country is dominated by the central Mountain range of Ramelau with as much as 44% of Timor-Leste's land having a slope of more than 40% and over 70% of the country's population dependent upon agriculture for their livelihood (Sandlund et al., 2001).

This short paper compiles some potential disasters that might not have happened in 2021 even though a major hazard occurred. No definitive statements are made of what did or did not transpire in each instance. Instead, the material offers a pedagogical and communications approach, especially to encourage deeper investigation and critique into what are and are not labelled as disasters and non-disasters—and the consequences of this labelling.

This short paper adopts a subjective approach to describing situations in 2021 in which a hazard was evident, but a disaster might not have resulted. Brief explanations are provided with some evidence and reasoning, to be used in teaching and science communication for deeper examination, verification and critique.

Examples exist in which hazards could have become disasters, but disasters might not have manifested, ostensibly due to disaster risk reduction. Reaching firm conclusions about so-called “non-disasters” is less straightforward.

Many reports rank the seemingly worst disasters while research often compares a disaster investigated with the apparently worst disasters previously experienced. This short paper instead provides possible ways of teaching and communicating potential non-disasters. It offers an approach for applying lessons to encourage action on disaster risk reduction, while recognising challenges with the labels “non-disaster”, “success” and “positive news”.