Local Governance in Timor-Leste - Secretaria de Estado da Arte e ...

Scott, 1985), approximately 95 percent of the land that is claimed by families inTimor-Leste is also controlled by them, three quarters of the land is inherited and twothirds is held under customary land tenure (Fitzpatrick, 2002: 167, Bank, 2003: 73).Customary land tenure includes land and also other resources such as water sourcesthat are considered common property. However, much land tenure is highlyindividuated, where residential land, gardens and plantations are claimed byindividual families rather than the larger group (Fitzpatrick et al., 2008: 3-4). Thissystem of land tenure means that traditional institutions guiding the hierarchy ofleadership and inheritance rights within families are of vital importance. The impactsof these traditional institutions are very real, where for example, the rules governinginheritance across much of Timor-Leste means that women cannot own or inherit thisland (Narciso and Henriques, 2010: 62). The highly gendered impact of suchinstitutions is often justified because land is a scarce good and women have access toand use of the land via marriage or through a male relative (Narciso and Henriques,2010: 63), which also has the effect of maintaining tight economic dependencieswithin family groups.Within and between uma kain, economic relations that are formally governed bytraditional institutions are characterised by ritual exchange. For example, theinstitution of barlake establishes important ongoing mutual obligations between wifegiverand wife-taker families. It also places important economic expectations on thewoman herself, as she is expected to become part of the family that she marries intoand to give her labour to her new family. The institution of barlake is often blamed asan important contributing factor to gender-based violence as it "promotes the idea ofwomen as property, establishes relations of unequal power within the family andinstils the idea that women should be subservient" (Narciso and Henriques, 2010: 59).The issues surrounding barlake are multi-dimensional, and in both Venilale andAinaro I was aware of domestic violence cases that arose from specific obligationsthat were entrenched through barlake. For example, in Venilale, there was a casewhere the husband had 'disciplined' his wife because she continued to provide food toher natural parents and this was thought improper as she should now be providing forher new family. Equally in Ainaro, leaders of local NGOs described cases where menwrongly believed they 'owned' their wives and thus had the right to beat them.However, understandings such as these are in opposition to the traditional importance157