Dangerised youth: the politics of security and development in Timor-Leste

Abstract

International organisations, the national government and civil society alike have identified youth as a potential threat to the stability of the young state of Timor-Leste over the last decade. In this article, I ask how these actors define the danger of youth and what reasons they identify for the potential threat of young citizens for the society and state. Guided by a theoretical framework of Critical Security and Development Studies, I argue that while political manipulation as reason for youth violence was a prominent part of the security discourse in the years after the crisis in 2006, the discourse on the danger of youth in very recent international and national documents has been depoliticised. Despite decreasing numbers of youth-related violence, the threat construction has not vanished; rather, the language on youth has been adapted to the existing international discourse on violent youth as a threat to successful development. In this way, international and national actors have sustained the image of a society in need of management.

Keywords:

• Conflict and security
• children and youth
• Southeast Asia
• statebuilding

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Miriam Tekath, Lynn Klinger, Stephen Foose, Tim Bader and Anne Lang for support and Janina Pawelz, Anne Menzel, Maria Ketzmerick, Thorsten Bonacker and the reviewers for comments and critique.

Notes

1. The boundaries of the age of youth in Timor Leste are not definite. The government and international organisations define youth as citizens roughly between 16 and 30 years. The national youth policy of 2016 defines the age of youth as between the years 15 and 24. Society-wide, citizens who are not ‘elders’ can also be considered young – individuals who would be defined as adults in Europe.

2. Sukarieh and Tannock, “Global Securitisation of Youth,” 4/5. For Timor-Leste see Myrttinen, “Histories of Violence”; Myrttinen, “Phantom Menaces.”

3. First, language is only one (...) means through which meaning is communicated (...) Second, an exclusive focus on language is problematic in the sense that it can exclude forms of bureaucratic practices or physical action that do not merely follow from securitizing ‘speech acts’ but are part of the process through which meanings of security are communicated and security itself constructed; McDonald, “Securitization Construction of Security,” 568–9.

4. Sukarieh and Tannock, “Global Securitisation of Youth.”

5. Schmeidl and Bose, “Youth Interrupted”; Berents and McEvoy-Levy, “Theorising Youth and Everyday Peace(Building),” 116; Evans, Lo Forte and McAslan Fraser, UNHCR’s Engagement Displaced Youth.

6. Berents and McEvoy-Levy, “Theorising Youth and Everyday Peace(Building),” 116.

7. Ibid.; Honwana, The Time of Youth, 11.

8. Schnabel, Albrecht and Tabyshalieva, Escaping Victimhood; Agbiboa, “Youth as Tactical Agents”; Schmeidl and Bose, “Youth Interrupted.”

9. Menzel, “Between Ex-Combatization and Peace.”

10. Cincotta, Engelman and Anastasion, The Security Demographic, 42.

11. Ibid.; Goldstone, Revolution and Rebellion; Collier, “Doing Well out of War”; Urdal, “Clash of Generations?”

12. A youth bulge is considered to be significantly large (and conflict prone) when young adults, aged 15 to 29 years, compromise more than 40% of all adults (15 years and older); Cincotta, Engelman and Anastasion, The Security Demographic, 43; see also Sukarieh and Tannock, “Global Securitisation of Youth.”

13. LaGraffe, “Youth Bulge in Egypt,” 67–71.

14. One notable exception is the edited volume of Utas and Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, African Conflicts Informal Power.

15. Hughes and Pupavac, “Framing Post-Conflict Societies,” 875.

16. Ibid., 874.

17. United Nations Timor-Leste, United for Youth Timor-Leste, 9.

18. Kurtenbach and Pawelz, “Voting is not Enough,” 146–50.

19. Wigglesworth, “Growth Civil Society Timor-Leste,” 53–7.

20. Blau and Fondebrider, “Dying for Independence.”

21. Bexley and Rodrigues Tchailoro, “Consuming Youth.”

22. Ibid., 419.

23. Cotton, East Timor, Australia and Regional Order; Fox, “Tracing Path, Recounting Past”; Goldstone, “UNTAET with Hindsight.”

24. Simonsen, “Authoritarian Temptation East Timor.”

25. A destructive chain of events was triggered by the government dismissing in March 2006 about 600 of the army’s 1400 troops. The soldiers had been on strike over work conditions and claimed they were discriminated against because they came from the west of the country. In April, a demonstration turned into violent clashes involving the former soldiers and splintering military and police forces. Over the following weeks, the crisis escalated into large-scale riots, with mobs burning and looting in Dili and elsewhere. By late June, it was reported that 150,000 people had fled their homes and more than 30 had been killed. Ibid., 576.

26. Cotton, “Timor-Leste and Discourse of State Failure”; Hood, “Security Sector Reform Timor”; Scambary, Da Gama and Barreto, Survey Gangs Youth Groups; Simonsen, “Security Institutions National Integration” Scambary, “Anatomy of a Conflict.”

27. Dewhurst, Violence Part of Culture; Arnold, “Who is My Friend”; Goldsmith, “It Wasn't like Normal Policing.”

28. Arnold, “Who is My Friend,” 379. Martial arts groups have existed in Timor-Leste for decades and many played significant roles during the resistance to Indonesian rule by gathering information and acting as couriers. (…) The second group are ritual arts clubs, who can best be identified as kakalok (magic or mystical) or isin kanek (wound) groups. (…) they are organised around mysticism, some based on traditional animist beliefs while others are additionally combined with aspects of Catholicism. (…) The third group of importance are bairo youth groups (grupo joven). Each ‘bairo’, essentially a local neighbourhood, has an official youth group (…) They organise neighbourhood activities such as sporting events, concerts, talks or training courses (…); Ibid., 382.

29. Pawelz, “Security, Violence Martial Arts,” 122–3.

30. Myrttinen, “Histories of Violence.”

31. Ibid., 130–1.

32. Dewhurst, Violence Part of Culture.

33. Streicher, “Construction of Masculinities and Violence,” 66.

34. Myrttinen, “Histories of Violence,” 302.

35. For further examples of securitisation of youth in 2006 in international media see Pawelz, “TeenRage Years,” 59–60.

36. Pawelz, “Transformation of Violence-Prone Groups,” 256–60.

37. Valters, Dewhurst and De Catheu, After the Buffaloes Clash.

38. Arnold, “Who is My Friend,” 379.

39. Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde, Security, 24.

40. Bigo, “Security and Immigration,” 66.

41. McDonald, “Securitization Construction of Security,” 568–9.

42. Van Der Borgh and Savenije, “De-Securitising Re-Securitising Gang Policies,” 175.

43. McDonald, “Securitization Construction of Security,” 565.

44. Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War, 19.

45. Ibid., 68–9.

46. Hönke and Müller, “Governing (In)Security Postcolonial World.”

47. Jabri, “Peacebuilding, Local and International.”

48. Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde, Security, 25.

49. Belun, Dynamics of Martial Arts; Bowd and Dewhurst, Assessing the Risk; Brady and Timberman, Crisis in Timor-Leste; Curtain and Taylor, Viewing Young People as Assets; Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, National Youth Policy 2016; Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste and UNICEF, Situation Analysis of Children; Dhungana and Adams, Youth, Democracy and Peacebuilding Timor-Leste; International Labour Organisation, Timor-Leste; Kaufman, “Timor-Leste Community Confronts Gang”; Kostner and Clark, Timor-Leste’s Youth in Crisis; Muggah and LeBrun, Timor-Leste Armed Violence Assessment; Pereira, “Media Gets It Wrong”; Scambary, Da Gama and Barreto, Survey Gangs Youth Groups; Small Arms Survey, Groups, Gangs and Armed Violence; UNESCO Office Jakarta and Regional Bureau for Science in Asia and the Pacific, UNESCO Country Programming Document; United Nations Timor-Leste, United for Youth Timor-Leste; Valters, Dewhurst and De Catheu, After the Buffaloes Clash; World Bank, Timor-Leste - Youth Development Project.

50. In a first step, categories were developed by an analysis of three randomly selected documents: positive frames, the frame of violent youth, explanations of youth violence and the more general frame on the danger of/threat by youth. Subsequently, all documents were coded. New (sub-)categories were established whenever a certain frame was distinguishable from the other already categorised frames. In total, 222 text passages were coded in six categories and 11 sub-categories.

51. One of the few exceptions that captures the process of securitisation on the ground is the study of Myrttinen on the ‘ninja panic’ in Timor-Leste and East Java in 2009/2010; Myrttinen, “Phantom Menaces.”

52. World Bank, Timor-Leste - Youth Development Project, 1.

53. UNESCO Office Jakarta and Regional Bureau for Science in Asia and the Pacific, UNESCO Country Programming Document, 4.

54. Dhungana and Adams, Youth, Democracy and Peacebuilding, 8.

55. Bigo, “Security and Immigration,” 66, 73.

56. Curtain and Taylor, Viewing Young People as Assets.

57. Pereira, “Media Gets It Wrong.”

58. There is a general trend – not always, and not for every crime category – that perpetrators are young; Steffensmeier et al., “Age Distribution of Crime”.

59. Belun, Early Warning, Early Response: February 2016; Belun, Early Warning, Early Response: December 2016.

60. Belun, Early Warning, Early Response: February 2016; Belun, Early Warning, Early Response: December 2016.

61. Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, National Youth Policy 2016, 1.

62. Pawelz, “Transformation of Violence-Prone Groups.”

63. Interview with Butterworth, 23 February 2016, Dili.

64. Belun and The Asia Foundation, Tara Bandu.

65. World Bank Youth Development Project between 2008 and 2012, http://projects.worldbank.org/P106220/timor-leste-youth-development-project?lang=en (09.06.2017).

66. Rajalingam and Marx, “Timor-Leste Elections 2017”; Hutt, “Trouble Timor-Leste’s Consensus Politics.”

67. Belun, Electoral Violence Monitoring Report.

68. Parliament of East Timor, “Practice of Martial Arts.”

69. News24, “East Timor Bans Martial Arts Clubs.”

70. Pawelz, “Transformation of Violence-Prone Groups,” 251.

71. Jütersonke et al., “Urban Violence in an Urban Village,” 45–7.

72. Valters, Dewhurst and De Catheu, After the Buffaloes Clash; Roll, Defining Veterans, Capturing History

73. Bexley and Rodrigues Tchailoro, “Consuming Youth.”