Keeping the Peace is Not Enough: Human Security and Gender-based Violence during the Transitional Period of Timor-Leste

Human security has been defined as people-centred and inextricably linked to development. This concept challenges the traditional security paradigm with its exclusive focus on the protection of the state and its sovereignty from conflict and immanent threats. By focusing on incidences of gender-based violence, this paper attempts to demonstrate the shortcomings of the UN peace-keeping mission and interim government in Timor-Leste in recognizing and redressing forms of violence and conflict other than those that threatened the new nation-state during the transitional period. Through the prism of gender-based violence, the paper argues that indigenous normatives and adjudication on gendered violence co-exist with the liberal principles of state-centric security and are mutually reinforcing. As a result, this has generated new forms of insecurity, stoking the uneasy peace that continues to haunt the new nation-in-the-making.