“Promoting local knowledge is crucial for peace and stability in Timor-Leste. It will be important to continue to use the Early Warning Early Response (EWER) system effectively for policy making, conflict prevention and peace building.

“Youth volunteers who received training on EWER are now confident and were able to gain a greater level of trust from their community to facilitate mediation at the community level.”

This was the message from UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative Roy Trivedy at today’s closing workshop of the “Building and Consolidating National Capacities for Conflict Prevention through Early Warning and Early Response” UNDP project, funded by the European Union and implemented in partnership with local NGO BELUN.  

Launched in December 2015, the project has further strengthened Timor-Leste’s existing conflict prevention and crisis management capacity through the existing Early Warning, Early Response (EWER) system which uses a volunteer monitoring network to gather data and information about incidents of violence and situational change across all 13 municipalities.

The integration of lessons learned in early warning and early response are an important contribution to the design of an early warning system.  As one of the founders and outgoing chair of the g7+ - a voluntary association of countries that are or have been affected by conflict and are now in transition to the next stage of development - Timor-Leste is in a unique position to promote conflict prevention and crisis management tools and practices among other g7+ countries.

Director General for Operational Services, Ministry of Defence and Security, Mr. Domingos Pinto said: “It is better to prevent than to cure. The National Directorate for Community Conflict Prevention was created to prevent conflict at the community level.”

National Director for Social Services, Ministry of Social Solidarity, Mr. Florencio Pina Gonzaga said: “Many activities that are done at the community level such as community dialogue, Tarabandu, and Nahe biti boot have materialized from community-owned initiatives.”

Head of Cooperation for the ‎European Union Delegation Timor-Leste Mr. Simon Le Grand added: “We are looking forward to making the EWER system sustainable.”

The closing workshop was also attended by Mr. Luis Ximenes, Director of NGO BELUN, the Ambassadors of Indonesia and Portugal and representatives from embassies, international agencies, government ministries, community leaders, disability organizations, LGBTI groups and youth.