Millennium Development Goals

Timor-Leste is one of the MDG focus countries because of its characteristics as a post-conflict country that requires urgent improvement of living conditions for people. Following the restoration of independence on 20 May 2002, Timor-Leste genuinely committed to attaining the MDGs. Being the newest member of the United Nations in 2002, Timor-Leste only formally began the process of achieving the MDGs when all other countries were already half way in the process of economic development.
 
In 2004, in partnership with the UN Country Team, the Government of Timor-Leste was one of the very few countries to report on the progress of the MDGs in the country. The MDG Report, together with the second National Human Development Report commissioned by UNDP, had great impact on the national policies. The Government issued a strategic document called “Combating Poverty as a National Cause, which was launched at the Timor-Leste Donors Meeting in April 2006.
 
With 80% of the population living as the subsistence farmers and 70% of the population in the rural areas, it is critical to monitor the progress of the MDGs and to have the adequate means and skills to develop realistic plans to achieve the MDGs both at the national and district level.

Current Programme

Timor-Leste's National Development Plan (NDP) 2002-2007 committed itself to the achievement of the MDGs, with a strong focus on poverty reduction and the economic empowerment of women. The Government made a concerted effort to strengthen links between policy formulation and programmes to achieve Goal 1, which is one of the twin objectives of the NDP, yet the capacities to translate these objective into annual budgetary allocations and execution remain a challenge.

Timor-Leste suffers from lack of data, which sometimes makes it difficult to formulate development policy. Although the country has adopted the DevInfo and hundreds of studies have been conducted since 1999, the current system requires improvements in regular data collection, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination at a disaggregated level and down to household level. In response, The Government of Timor-Leste and the UN country team seek to enhance the capacities of the National Statistics Directorate (NSD) in monitoring the implementation of poverty reduction policies and programmes to address those issues, thus the MDG process, while enhancing transparency and promoting accountability through dissemination of the results on the implementation of poverty reduction policies and programmes to the people. By having more accurate and disaggregated data both at the national and district levels, there will be a stronger analytical base for MDG target setting/refinement.

A draft report on the MDG targets has now been produced based on 2004 Census and the latest Timor-Leste Survey of Living Standards 2007. Parallel to this exercise, a draft report on the MDGs in one of the pilot districts, Oecusse, has been produced. Both reports will be available by January 2009.

The Government has launched a series of measures to alleviate hardships in the country. Given its global mandate of mainstreaming HIV/AIDS in development work, UNDP Timor-Leste has supported setting up of the National AIDS Commission (NAC) in 2006 and continues to assist strengthening NAC secretariat. It adopted international procedures on HIV/AIDS such as international precautions, PEP, Mother to Child transmission, GIPA, etc.

UNDP Timor-Leste is also working with the Inter-Ministerial Working Group for Environmental and Natural Resource Management which is expected to become an active forum to ensure steps towards achieving sustainable development for policies and programmes. Timor-Leste has signed to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, under which it must report on the status of its biological diversity and where it stands under the CBD targets.