Her Story (Feto nia Istoria): Empowering Women and Increasing Their Access to Justice

In October 2012, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs awarded us a two year project entitled “Women Empowerment and Increasing Access to Justice” (WEA2J). This yearlong project targeted women and youth from across all thirteen districts of Timor-Leste to address the entwined problems of the cultural subjugation of women and a weak formal legal system. To do this, we promoted legal awareness and responsiveness for women and strengthened the capacity of civil society organizations and the local media in Timor-Leste.

Specifically, WEA2J sought to achieve three goals:

1. To increase public awareness about the basic right to seek legal action for legitimate grievances.
2. To increase public knowledge and change public perceptions towards the Timorese judicial system.
3. To enhance the capacity and sustainability of Timorese civil society organizations so that they can play a more active role in justice, women’s rights, and the peacebuilding process.

The key to the success of the project was also the development of the delivery, monitoring, and public engagement capacities of many media institutions.

Project activities included:

• Production of the Radio Series “Feto nia Istoria” (“Her Story”), which covered a wide range of issues concerning access to justice faced by marginalized groups in Timor-Leste, with a focus on land rights for women, labor rights, combating violence against women, divorce, and prostitution. This was followed by an interactive talk show and quizzes, in partnership with the Timor-Leste Media Development Centre (TLMDC), Radio Timor-Leste (RTL), and 15 community radio stations.
• Listener Groups and Focus Group Discussions were organized in order to garner feedback on the “Her Story” program, while at the same time reinforcing key messages from the shows. These focus group discussions provided citizens an opportunity to engage their peers and evaluate the program. These discussions also included facilitated behavior scenarios conducted by the AATL (Timor-Leste Bar Association), which helped us assess whether vulnerable groups are able to identify legal issues or conflicts and to help them articulate solutions for accessing justice and transforming conflict.

The project has effectively raised awareness about land issues and gender based violence, as well as how to address these issues. According to police officials in Baucau and Aileu, there has been an increase in the number of referrals of gender based violence cases to the police since 2010, but a reduction in the amount of Gender Based Violence cases generally, and there is no doubt that our project has in part contributed to these changes.

Eighty-six percent of survey respondents indicated that the programs were useful, and that it had increased their trust in the formal justice system. Particularly positive was that women mostly regarded the programs practically useful and that the majority of listeners were favorable of the Her Story program’s overall content. Furthermore, according to the survey conducted by our team in Timor-Leste, 86.2% of listeners reported that the radio programs increased their knowledge of how to access the formal justice system, while 83.8% were confident of when to use the justice system because of the radio programs.