30 January 2001

Dili, EAST TIMOR: Eighty-one United Nations Volunteers arrived in East Timor today to begin registering the population in each of the territory's 13 provinces. Following the deployment of an advance team of 50 UN Volunteers in December 2000, their arrival completes the Civil Registration Team of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET).

The UNV civil registration officers, following five days of UNV/UNTAET briefings in Darwin, Australia, traveled straight to their duty stations at the sub-district level.

"The deployment of these UN Volunteers is very important for UNTAET and for this transition period which will lead to the elections due to take place later this year," said Kevin Gilroy, the UNV Coordinator in East Timor who has overseen UNV operations since the August 1999 referendum. UN Volunteers prepared the balloting process in which the vast majority of East Timorese people voted for independence from Indonesia.

"This group of UN Volunteers highlights the next step in the whole process. Their mandate as civil registration officers within UNTAET's Civil Registry Unit is to conduct the registration of all Timorese," he explained, adding: "As one direct result of this exercise, the Civil Registry will therefore be able to provide data for the development of the voter registration and electoral roll." The initial registration will begin in February and will be completed by 20 June.

Never before have so many UN Volunteers been deployed in a single UN mission. In other UN missions over the past 10 years, there have been large UNV deployments where UN Volunteers have worked in civil registration and electoral processes, such as in Cambodia and Kosovo. However within the UNTAET mission, more than 800 UN Volunteers will soon be working in the civil registry and electoral sectors, but also in over 150 different areas of expertise ranging from the legal, judicial and political sectors, to technical support, security and public information. Currently over 630 UN Volunteers, representing some 90 nationalities, are serving in East Timor.

One UNV who arrived today is Rod Todd of Canada. A committed community activist with a special interest in youth, he served as a UN Volunteer in Somalia following a 38-year career in the British Columbia correction services. When asked why he signed up to work with UNV in East Timor, Mr. Todd said: "We are really involved in the birth of a nation, getting everything in place and seeing the whole process through, so that East Timor will become a contributing nation in the community of nations. I have been involved in a number of federal and provincial elections back home in British Columbia and can therefore appreciate the background to the development of these elections. It will be a tremendous amount of work."

Ms. Besa Sylejmani from Kosovo has extensive experience working with civil registries and elections in her strife-torn homeland. She worked for the Canadian KFOR troops in Kosovo before becoming a national trainer for the civil registration and elections in Kosovo last year. "I know that I will make sacrifices and suffer, especially from the heat and the conditions, but this is a good opportunity," she said.