Timor Leste (East Timor)

Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) based approaches to sanitation improvement are spreading in Timor-Leste. Staff from international and local NGOs, UNICEF, and government agencies have taken part in CLTS trainings and most of these organizations are now either financing or implementing CLTS interventions. Furthermore, both larger supported USAID and AusAid programs in Timor-Leste are now only supporting non-subsidy based approaches. Despite the growing implementation of CLTS in Timor-Leste, most of the current interventions are pilot projects rather than large-scale programs. WaterAid remains one of the largest implementers of CLTS but, in the last three and a half years, has covered less than 50 small hamlets.

Recently, with the growing consensus among implementers supporting the behavior based approaches to sanitation improvement, the government has taken interest in CLTS. Although it is not all supportive and there has been much difficulty in furthering progress due to the mixed opinions among different Ministries. Multiple recent initiatives including development of a National Sanitation Policy, completion of a Joint Sanitation Evaluation, creation of a Department of Sanitation in the Ministry of Infrastructure, study tours, and an increase in sanitation resources is hoped to further development and reach of sanitation consensus and improvement which would likely include CLTS. The government with the larger amount of financial resources it has allocated and with support from donors is now on the brink of design for larger or scalable sanitation improvement. Various initiatives are now being continued or planned by government and NGOs throughout 2010.