Report on Citizenship Law East Timor (Timor-Leste) Patrícia Jerónimo 1. Introduction Timor-Leste is among the world’s newest nations, having been officially recognised by the international community as an independent state on 20 May 2002. The nation-building process is still very much under way and is fraught with perils, from internal divisions to conspicuous external influences, not to mention the frailty of its institutions, its lack of infrastructures, the extreme poverty of the population (in spite of the country’s wealth in natural resources) and the challenges in securing respect for human rights. The memory of the violence which followed the 1999 independence referendum is still fresh. And so are the marks of 400 years of Portuguese colonial rule and of 24 years of Indonesian military occupation. The country is very small – ‘half an island located on the easternmost tip of the Archipelago of the Lesser Sunda Islands, near Australia and New Guinea, 19 000 km2 in area’ (Carneiro de Sousa 2001: 183) –, but is characterised by ‘dramatic geography, isolation, and diverse local cultural traditions’, including more than sixteen distinct language groups (Harrington 2007). Currently it has a population of over 1,200,000 people.1 Timorese citizenship was born with the new independent state, on 20 May 2002. The Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste (Constituição da República Democrática de Timor-Leste),2 which entered into force on that same day, set the criteria for the attribution of Timorese citizenship by birth (cidadania originária) and referred to ordinary legislation the definition of the rules on acquisition,3 loss, reacquisition, registration and proof of Timorese citizenship (Article 3, under the heading ‘citizenship’). Much like the rest of the constitutional text, Article 3 reflects the combined influences of the Mozambican Constitution of 1990 and of the Portuguese Constitution of 1976 (Charlesworth 2003: 328). The first is reflected in the Constituent Assembly’s option for setting substantive criteria for the attribution of citizenship, while the second is evidenced by its option for referring the bulk of the citizenship regime to ordinary legislation. The combination is not without difficulties, as will be discussed below. 1 Information available at http://countrymeters.info/pt/Timor-Leste [18.09.2016]. Available at http://www.mj.gov.tl/jornal/public/docs/ConstituicaoRDTL_Portugues.pdf [22.01.2017]. 3 Following a long standing tradition in Portuguese speaking countries, the Timorese Constitution and ordinary legislation distinguish between attribution of citizenship by birth and acquisition of citizenship by naturalisation. The terms will be used accordingly throughout this report. 2 RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2017/7 - © 2017 Author 1