Report on Citizenship Law: East Timor (Timor-Leste) Registry was established to maintain a register of the residents of East Timor, including verification and registration of the identity and residence of residents of East Timor and the issue of identity cards to such persons of the age of 16 years and above who were duly registered [Article 2 (1)]. Registration with the Central Civil Registry was mandatory for all residents of East Timor who had attained the age of 16 years and who did not suffer from any mental or legal incapacity, and was available to all other who satisfied the requirements for registration; the parents and family members had a duty to accomplish registration for children under 16 and persons suffering from any mental or legal incapacity [Article 5 (1)]. Residents of East Timor could establish their identity and eligibility for registration by a wide range of evidentiary methods, per Article 7. Any person aged 16 years or above duly registered by the Civil Registry as a habitual resident or as a long-term resident was entitled to receive an identity card [Article 8 (1) and (2)]. Similarly to the Regulation on the border regime, UNTAET Regulation 2001/3 also included a disclaimer regarding citizenship. Article 8 (4) ruled that neither registration nor the issue of an identity card by the Civil Registry would confer upon any person a right to the citizenship of East Timor or the entitlement to claim a right to the citizenship of East Timor. Pursuant to this Regulation, a massive registration campaign was conducted. It ended on 23 June 2001, with 778,989 East Timorese residents having been registered and issued temporary identity cards.70 UNTAET Regulation 2001/2, of 16 March 2001, on the election of a Constituent Assembly to prepare a Constitution for an independent and democratic East Timor,71 also followed the 1999 Agreement criteria when defining who was eligible to vote in the election for the Constituent Assembly.72 Eligible to vote (and to be elected) were the persons, aged 17 years or above, who were born in East Timor, or were born outside East Timor, but with at least one parent having been born in East Timor, or were spouses of persons falling under one of the two previous categories (Articles 30 and 32). However, contrary to what had happened in the popular consultation of 1999, this time there was no registration and balloting abroad, since entitlement to vote was restricted to those registered in East Timor and present in East Timor on polling day.73 The election took place on 30 August 2001, giving a clear victory to FRETILIN, the ‘party of the resistance’, and the Constituent Assembly had its inaugural session on 15 September 2001. A first draft was provisionally approved on 9 February 2002 and the Constitution was finally approved on 22 March 2002 (Brandt 2005: 18). Reports about the workings of the Constituent Assembly seem to be fairly consensual in their criticism about the lack of openness to input from civil society organisations and the 70 Information available at http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/past/etimor/Untaetchrono.html [11.01.2017]. 71 Available at http://mj.gov.tl/jornal/lawsTL/UNTAET-Law/Regulations%20English/Reg2001-02.pdf [12.01.2017]. 72 And the same is true of UNTAET Regulation 2002/01, of 16 January 2002, on the election of the first President of an independent and democratic East Timor, regarding the eligibility of voters (Article 21). To stand as candidate, further age, residence and registration requirements applied (Article 23). UNTAET Regulation 2002/01 is available at http://mj.gov.tl/jornal/lawsTL/UNTAET-Law/Regulations%20English/ Reg2002-01.pdf [12.01.2017]. 73 Per Article 4 (2), only residents of a given district, who registered as such in that district and were present in that district on polling day, would be allowed to vote for that district’s representative. Per Article 5 (2), all persons eligible to vote who had registered in East Timor and were present in East Timor on polling day would be entitled to vote for the national representatives. This exclusion of non-residents was criticised for impeding a large number of East Timorese, some of whom were abroad in refugee camps, to take part in the nation building process. Carter (2011: 672) argues that, ‘[g]iven the presence of a large number of refugees and the transformative nature of the election, there is a strong argument that the non-resident citizen population ought to be given the right to vote in the Constituent Assembly election as a matter of international human rights law’. RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2017/7 - © 2017 Author 17