Timor-Leste (also known as East Timor) is on the eastern half of the island nation Timor. Timor lies below Indonesia and west of Papua New Guinea. Coffee first came to Timor-Leste when the Portuguese occupied it in the 1860s, and quickly became responsible for half of the country’s exports, until Indonesia gained control of East Timor in the
Occupying 5,743 square miles on the eastern half of an island in the Timor Sea between Indonesia and Australia, Timor-Leste has a population of approximately 1.1 million people. Timor-Leste became independent on May 20, 2002, and is a democratically-governed, independent nation with an elected President and Parliament.
The negotiations were crucial to Timor-Leste, because the resources in the Timor Sea could help lift it out of poverty, but it was later revealed Australia had bugged the offices of the fledgling
Timor-Leste argues the maritime boundary between it and Australia should be a median line equidistant between the two countries, putting the vast majority of the exploitable area in its territory.The U.N. estimates that nearly half of Timor-Leste’s population lives below the extreme poverty line of $1.90 a day, and that 42 of every 1,000 babies die before their fifth birthday because ofOn 17 December 2013 Timor‑Leste also filed a Request for the indication of provisional measures in order to protect its rights and to prevent the use of the seized documents and data by Australia against its interests and rights in the pending arbitration and with regard to other matters relating to the Timor Sea and its resources. IOM first began work in Timor-Leste in August 1999. Since then IOM has provided return and reintegration assistance to the approximately 190,000 Timorese people who fled to West Timor (Indonesia) during the 1999 post-referendum violence; contributed to the disarmament and reintegration of ex-Falintil combatants; and undertaken a number of community stabilization and infrastructure programs. relations between the united states and timor-leste Timor-Leste maintains an embassy in Washington, DC, as well as a Permanent Mission in New York at the United Nations. The United States has a large bilateral development assistance program--$23.3 million in fiscal year 2005--and also contributes funds as a major member of a number of Gndh.