News (Consolidated) - UNSOM

Maliana, 21 February 2011 - Delfina Fatima has been running her bakery in Maliana for a year. But she says the $500 loan she received a few months ago from one of Timor-Leste's microfinance institutions, Tuba Rai Metin, has made a huge difference to her business. "I'm now producing a lot more bread…

Tibar, 25 February 2011 (IRIN) - For the past eight years, the same three have topped a UN ranking of the countries with the highest percentage of chronically malnourished children: Afghanistan (59 percent), Yemen (58 percent), and the Southeast Asian half-island nation bordering Indonesia, Timor…

Dili, 15 December 2010 (IRIN) - As the number of reported sexual crimes in Timor Leste increases, survivors - mostly women and girls - must wait up to one year as their cases wind through a struggling court system. In a recent survey on law and justice in Timor-Leste, the Asia Foundation's office in…

UNITED NATIONS, 10 December 2010 - Human rights are the foundation of freedom, peace, development and justice — and the heart of the work of the United Nations around the world. Laws to protect and promote human rights are indispensable. But quite often, progress comes down to people, courageous…

Dili, 22 November 2010 (IRIN) - Timor-Leste's government is engaging rural communities to improve the country's road network, which is almost 60 percent unpaved, to create jobs and develop vital infrastructure. The TIM-Works Project, being implemented by the Secretariat of State for Vocational…

Dili, 11 November 2010 (IRIN) - Hardly a tremor was felt in Timor-Leste after the undersea 6.1 magnitude earthquake 85km north of the capital, Dili, on 16 October. The country, sited in one of the world's most volatile volcano and earthquake-prone areas, known as the Pacific Ring of Fire, has been…

Dili, 14 October 2010 (IRIN) - HIV prevalence is low in Timor-Leste - 0.2 percent based on results from the latest surveillance by the government and World Health Organization (WHO). But this rate is rapidly increasing and most likely under-reported, according to the Health Ministry. Data on "risky…

Dili, 11 October 2010 - "My wife and I have 6 children under the age of 9. We survive on what little I can farm from public land. We own 2 hens and 2 pigs". Blasius Abi's life is just one example of the hand-to-mouth existence that many Timorese people experience. Blasius lives in the aldeia, or…

Dili, 30 September 2010 - "I wanted the chance to serve my nation. The Timorese Parliament needs legal drafters for the long term future of the country." So says Mr. Aires Francisco Cabral, one of the 10 legal drafters successfully graduating from their first year of training. The training programme…

Dili/ Suai, 29 September 2010 (IRIN) - An unrelenting rainy season linked to La Niña has dragged on for months in Timor-Leste and left farmers without a June harvest and unsure when to plant for the next one. Farmers in the southern district of Covalima usually plant from late November to March and…

Dili/ Suai, 21 September 2010 (IRIN) - The government of Timor-Leste is struggling to implement a recently adopted law criminalizing domestic violence, amid scepticism that it is too much, too soon. "We are a teenager of a country," Maria Filomena Babo Martins, chief of training and education at the…

Dili/ Suai, 21 September 2010 (IRIN) - Months after the long-awaited passage of a law criminalizing domestic violence, IRIN met survivors staying at shelters in the capital, Dili, and in the southern Timorese town of Salele run by the NGO East Timor Women's Communication Forum and Catholic…