In December, the YRIS Interviews and Events Team sat down for an interview with Fausto Belo Ximenes, a member of the 2024 Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program. A human rights advocate and public policy practitioner, Ximenes was the Country Director for Timor-Leste with Oxfam International. He has worked with various grassroots and international organizations in Timor-Leste to promote inclusive economic development, human rights, climate justice, and civic participation.
The YRIS Interviews and Events Team discussed with Ximenes his journey into community advocacy, and his experience promoting transitional justice in one of the youngest independent nations in the world. Throughout our conversation, Ximenes shared with us his belief in a model of community justice is deeply rooted in both education, grassroots empowerment, and personal connection. In an age where dynamics of international development are sizeably shifting, Ximenes’ insights are incredibly powerful for anyone interested in global advocacy.
You can find the full interview to listen to above, or read selected quotes from our interview with Ximenes below. Note that all quotes have been edited for length and clarity.
Vittal Sivakumar: Could you introduce yourself, and tell us about your journey to your rule at Oxfam International?
Fausto Belo Ximenes: Of course. My name is Fausto Belo Ximenes, and I am from Timor Leste. In case some of the listeners don’t know where it is, I=it is a small half island country located between Australia and Indonesia. Its political history includes 450 years of Portuguese colonization until 1975 and in 1975 it declared its independence for about two weeks, and after that, it was invaded by Indonesia, which led to the 24 years subsequent occupation by the Indonesian military. Timor Leste restored its independence in 2002.
I grew up under Indonesian military occupation. And growing up under occupation, I witnessed a lot of human right violations, violence, discrimination, and exclusion. At some point in my youth, I had been a recipient of international humanitarian assistance, and witnessed the work of international development workers. This exposure led me to think deeply about what I wanted to do when I grew up, and whenever Timor became peaceful and independent.
I finished my early education in Timor under the Indonesian occupation, including after Timor became an independent country, during which I was still in high school.
I moved to the United States to attend Stony Brook University on Long Island, where I studied International Relations and Comparative Politics. This later led me to do graduate studies in public policy at Oxford and in human rights practice at Roehampton University.
For the past 14 years, I have been doing exactly the kind of work I wanted to do while growing up under occupation. This includes having worked with US government international development programs on access to justice, legal aid, rule of law, and democratic governance.
Recently prior to coming to Yale, I was the Oxfam International Security Director in Timor. We worked on an array of topics and themes, including responding to the COVID-19 and flood crises, working with youth groups, and working with womens’ and girls’ groups to further their inclusion into the policy making process.
Abla Abdulkadir: How would you describe your philosophies regarding peace building and international development?
Fausto Belo Ximenes:
When you work in the international development and humanitarian aid sector, especially in countries where there are contexts of conflict or post-conflict, there are a number of things to think about. Consider, for example, that you work and lead an organization of about 4.050 staff. It is really important to understand what your own staff are going through. One main reason they are part of your team is for job security and to provide food to their families, but many of them also may be going through things that you haven’t seen. There can sometimes be a disconnect between leadership and their teams when you haven’t experienced violence or war in countries with contexts of conflict. This gap in experience can prevent people from being leaders that are sensible and conscious about what impacts team performance. Leadership is not just about indicators and results. As critical as they are, the people behind successes and performances are also incredibly important. When you are a leader of an organization, you want to deliver, make an impact, and understand the well-being of your own team that is contributing and creating these impacts.
What does this idea mean with regards to community? International development organizations are shifting today, although maybe not at the ideal pace. There are more efforts now to make sure that local communities, local organizations, and grassroots groups are the leaders of change that they want to see in their communities. Traditionally, international development has been rooted in colonialism. Dynamics of international development have been framed as the Global North supporting so-called less developed and developing countries. So there has always been a sort of divergence in the perception of people living in countries supported by international development. As somebody who has led international organizations, we think deeply about how to challenge these perceptions.
Abla Abdulkadir: What are some of the biggest challenges and efforts in promoting climate action and gender equality within the cultural and political context of Timor Leste?
Fausto Belo Ximenes:
New countries definitely have their own challenges. Timor Leste is a small half-island country. Half-island because East Timor, or Timor Leste, is a sovereign country. West Timor is part of Indonesia. Timor Leste has a population of 1.3 million people, about 70 – 75% percent of which are under the age of 35.
If you’re familiar with the youth bulge, It basically just shows that a country’s population is predominantly young people. Timor Leste has one of the most youthful populations in Asia-Pacific region I believe, or only just behind Afghanistan and a few other countries, This youth bulge can turn into a dividend with strategic investments when there are jobs for youth, when they are being prepared properly to enter into the market, and to be able to contribute to society. So basically, the youth dividend is just another way of saying a blessing. But, there can also be the opposite scenario. If a country is not making adequate investment in its youth, and if there are very few job prospects, we cannot see this youth dividend. If the education system is poor, and the quality of education, the actual substance of what’s been taught in schools and universities has not been designed to actually reflect today’s societal needs, and give youth a competitive edge, you cannot see a youth dividend. and make your youth a competitive sort of like, you know, edge, then you cannot see a youth dividend. So youth bulge can translate into your dividend, and can be a blessing with the right investments, but it can also be a curse. So what happens when you don’t invest in young people? Young people are the other leaders that we have to put in all the effort to actually support, and prepare them to lead countries going forward. Especially in post conflict settings, where most of my professional work has taken place, there is that big risk of us not investing in youth, especially in countries as young as Timor-Leste.
Another critical challenge that the country faces is climate change. It’s beginning to impact communities more and more heavily. You see a greater number of climate related or climate induced disasters in Timor- Leste, and that is one, and I think most of the small island countries in the Pacific or in the Caribbeans or in other regions of the world are facing similar sort of challenges as well. It’s very important for these countries and territories, including Timor Leste, to have collective voices in the global discussions around climate change and the impact on their islands, communities, and livelihoods. Timor Leste is part of an association that is called Small Island Developing States, and it has been an advocate for global leaders to take into account the level of fragility and vulnerability that countries like Timor Leste and other small island countries and territories are facing. Small island developing countries, all of them combined, have contributed the least to climate change.
As a leader, as global leaders, whether you’re an American President or a British Prime Minister or the Head of the EU, when we are talking about supporting communities that are affected by climate change, we need to know who are affected the most. Our solution has to be such that these individuals, these households, these groups, these countries, have their needs met, not only when a program is fully designed and delivered, but also during the process of developing programs. I know that there are now a couple of finance mechanisms to support these communities. So you have funding mechanisms like the Global Environment Facility, the Green Climate Fund, which have spoken about loss and damage funds, mostly proposed and advocated for strongly by small island developing nations. I think it’s very, very important that we know and understand, and put resources where they’re most needed. Because these communities, these countries, these islanders have had little to do with climate change, and that’s the reason why I said earlier that we can’t just talk about climate change. We have to talk about climate justice, and what talking about climate justice means.
Q: What advice do you have for young leaders who are looking to make a difference in the area of International Development?
International development is called international development because it’s most likely operating outside your own country. Say you’re from the States and you’re working in a developing country, and with actors that are diverse and systems and processes based on a global sort of systems and procedures that your organization has developed that apply to multiple different countries. Advice that I could provide to you and to all the listeners who are young and and interested in joining international development is it is an exciting area, and you get to really support communities that you wanted to support. You get to see the impacts. You get to engage, not only with the government. You engage with the communities. You engage with local leaders that oftentimes are like centers of powers that impact the work that we deliver. You also get to meet a lot of international people, bringing in different experiences and lives that enrich you and your team. So for me, of course, you see a lot of poverty, you see a lot of challenges, and you see a lot of suffering that people go through. Some are actually happening as you are in those countries. Some are just recovering, or barely recovering from those. So you see a lot of difficult situations, and you can’t have beautiful situations without also understanding and embracing difficult situations. You have to think about how you can contribute to improving those situations. So I would say that as young Yale College students, go out there and explore. Go out there and experience and experiment. And if it’s not for you, there’s always some other things that you could do, not necessarily international development, but there are always other work that you could be doing. But I would say, you know, the great thing about being young is time, right? You’ve got time, plenty of time on your hands. So that means, you know, exploring and testing. And see if that’s for you. For me, I started doing that before I went to college, and then I went back and kept doing that, and I’m still sticking to it, because it’s not just a job, as I said, it’s a conviction. It’s a personal and professional conviction that I would like to continue supporting communities and countries that are struggling in multiple ways through international development and humanitarian aid work.
Image courtesy of the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs