The UN and East Timor

Abstract

The events surrounding the 30 August 1999 'consultation' in East Timor help shed light on some of the problems the United Nations organisation faces in attempting to promote political order in the post-Cold-War world. The UN became involved in East Timor in a number of ways following the Indonesian invasion of the territory in December 1975: the Security Council passed two resolutions demanding that Indonesia withdraw 'all its forces from the territory'; the General Assembly between December 1975 and November 1982 passed a series of complementary resolutions; and the Secretary-General sought (vainly) to exercise his 'Good Offices' through the endeavours of his Special Representative, Vittorio Winspeare Guicciardi. Despite these activities, the East Timor issue was neglected for many years, but the Dili massacre of 1991, the case of Portugal v. Australia in the International Court of Justice, and the award of the Nobel Peace Prize jointly to resistance spokesman Jose Ramos-Horta and to Bishop Carlos Belo helped give it new life. The collapse of the Suharto regime in May 1998 set the scene for real movement on the East Timor issue. The UN was an obvious partner in any attempt to advance the issue. Its experience in election monitoring strongly suggested that in an atmosphere of deep division a neutral security force is required to protect voters from retribution. Nonetheless, the 5 May 1999 Accords contained no provision for such a force, and in addition were very loosely worded. As UNAMET prepared to test the opinion of the East Timorese, it became clear that pro-integration militias, backed by the Indonesian military, were indeed a profound threat to the voters. In the aftermath of the 78.5% vote for independence rather than autonomy, they went on the rampage, and it became all too obvious that the UN lacked the resources to honour its promise not to abandon the East Timorese. While the Security Council's decision on 15 September to authorise the deployment to East Timor (with Indonesian consent) of an international force more or less ensures that East Timor will secure its independence, that independence comes at a price, measured in the loss of innocent lives and destruction of property, which might have been avoided had the approach of the UN and key member states not been premised on such wildly optimistic assumptions about likely Indonesian goodwill.