Timor-Leste: Education, Decolonization and Development

In May 2002, Timor-Leste became the first country in the world to achieve its independence in the twenty-first century, ending over 400 years of colonial rule which had begun with the arrival of the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. In 1974-5, a revolution in Portugal prompted a short-lived attempt by FRETILIN, the political party which founded the Timor-Leste independence movement, to decolonize the education system, but this was aborted by the military invasion and occupation of the country by its largest neighbour, the Republic of Indonesia, in December 1975. Independence was finally won only after a protracted war of national liberation forced the eventual withdrawal of the Indonesians in September 1999, and a period of direct rule by the United Nations until 2002 (Cabral, 2002). For ten years, now, this tiny country of one million people, occupying the eastern half of a rugged island 600 kilometres north of Australia, has struggled to build its first fully-developed independent education system out of the ruins left by colonialism and war. However, unlike many other ex-colonies which achieved independence in the second half of the last century, the newly emerging education system in Timor-Leste has been the site of a major multinational aid and reconstruction effort, initially coordinated by the United Nations and the World Bank. Its recent history therefore provides an object lesson in the role of international actors in educational development in countries of the Global South. While the pre-colonial period lasted from 40000 bce until the arrival of the first Portuguese explorers in 1516, the traditional systems of Indigenous education that developed over millennia are not considered in this chapter. Rather, the focus is on the recent history of Timor-Leste.