United Nations Radio

Timor-Leste Women Prepare Vegetable

The Asian nation of Timor-Leste has emerged from decades of conflict, but Timorese women continue to struggle both in the aftermath of conflict and in the fight for equality. Idelta Maria Rodrigues, Timor-Leste's Secretary of State for Promotion and Equality told UN Radio's Sandra Guy at UN Radio that little by little women are overcoming the many obstacles they face.

RODRIGUES: Timorese women face many obstacles particularly related to the social, patriarchal and cultural. So for that reason we have good mechanism that has been established to promote women's right because we know that women's right is human rights. Many women organizations have been established but we know that we have a big problem particularly how the women is independent, they are not dependent to their men. This is one of the biggest obstacle that we face right now. But on the other side we have done many promotions particularly in the government and also in the Parliament - also in the community leader position. We just did our community election that 11 members are women, we would like to have more than 11 people but step by step we have started because many women are illiterate, are not educated but the government through the Ministry of Education have a literacy programme specific to the women. So this is one of the mechanism that we promote women's rights.

GUY: The head of the UN Mission in Timor is a woman so what impact this have in the promotion of women's participation?

RODRIGUES: This is very good progress as a model for Timorese women. From our eyes is very good to encourage and to motivate other leaders to see how important to promote women in key position. If we have a woman in key position is very easy for the other women to be promoted. But if we have a man there, maybe, they won't recognize that woman is important also to sit in that position. Because I have experience in the Parliament and the government when we have a woman in the key position like Finance, Justice or others, or in the Parliament is very good opportunity to other women to came and they do influence - to complaint for their rights. How they can give importance and focus on the human rights. But if men, not all, but in reality we always have experience that men sometimes they don't think that woman is important as a partner.

GUY: Is domestic violence a problem in Timor?

RODRIGUES: Yes, this is one of the problems that we are facing because year by year the number of cases of domestic violence increases. But we have established some system and mechanism to deal with domestic violence even we know that we have a established mechanism but we still have a problem in terms of human resources and then the financial. Right now we have established a Vulnerable Persons Unit in the district and sub-district but we still have big problems. Why? Because lack of transportation, lack of information. They don't know how to deal with cases of domestic violence but regarding the new penal code of Timor-Leste criminalized domestic violence as a public crime so it is good that it is a public crime but the resources are not yet ready to implement domestic violence. We still need the support to work together to prevent domestic violence in Timor-Leste.

GUY: What is the progress of Timor-Leste in promoting the Millennium Development Goals?

RODRIGUES: Right now the government has a task force to see how is the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals. We also have time lined how we are achieving the 2015 and on the other side we also have Millennium Development Goals fund that comes from Spain, it is a joint programme within UN agencies, UNFPA, UNDP, ILO and others.

PRES: That was Idelta Maria Rodrigues, Timor-Leste's Secretary of State for Promotion and Equality speaking to UN Radio's Sandra Guy.

DURATION: 4'05"