CEPAD

Message From Director

Welcome and thank you for visiting the Centre of Studies for Peace and Development (CEPAD) website. CEPAD emerged in 2007 in response to the 2006 crisis in Timor-Leste. Its mission is to use collaborative research and dialogue to advance the understanding of conflict-related issues and the major challenges to the consolidation of representative democracy in the country.

Since its inception in 2007, CEPAD has worked with different donors, programmes and communities across the country’s 13 municipalities, identifying and broadening the understanding of the complex challenges to peace in Timor-Leste, using the well-recognized Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology. Through a research process developed from 2007 to 2009, the following issues emerged as the most pressing challenges to peace in the country: (1) the promotion of individual and political party interests over the national interest; (2) the need for a common narrative of the history of the resistance and the occupation; (3) the ineffective formal judicial system and the culture of impunity; and, (4) Corruption, Collusion and Nepotism (KKN).

CEPAD does not just undertake research. Building on its PAR methodology, CEPAD has produced a number of policy publications contributing to policy deliberations around these priorities. PAR fosters inclusion, long-term social empowerment of communities and their ownership and sustainability of results. Today CEPAD manages six “Peace Houses” which function as hubs for peacebuilding activities in the following locations: Aileu, Ermera, Maliana, Baucau, Same and Manatuto.

The CEPAD website contains resources like materials, publications, manuals, videos, news, reports and more. CEPAD works in partnership with Interpeace, an international peacebuilding organization based in Geneva, with over 20 years of experience assisting societies torn by conflict to build sustainable peace.