Attachments
Highlights
• During the fourth quarter of 2025, consultations were conducted with stakeholders engaged in disaster preparedness and resilience in Timor-Leste, including the Pacific Humanitarian Warehousing Program (PHWP) of the Pacific Community (SPC), the EU-funded Building Safety and Resilience in the Pacific project (BSRP), and the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management (AHA Centre) to discuss joint activities and shared resources. As the Civil Protection Authority of Timor-Leste (CPA) is the principal government counterpart across these initiatives, alignment among programmes is essential to minimise duplication, ensure complementarity, and leverage synergies.
• Building on priorities agreed at the second humanitarian logistics preparedness workshop in June 2025, the project has been working with CPA and the Logistics Technical Working Group (LTWG) core members to develop a 2026 joint work plan and identify collaborating partners. The focus will be to strengthen national logistics coordination and information sharing, and to improve warehousing and inventory management through targeted training, and the development and harmonisation of relevant SOPs.
Background
Based on risk indices and national-level logistics performance and capacity indicators, in 2024 Timor Leste was recommended to the Global Preparedness Network as a new country candidate in Asia to implement the Logistics Cluster’s Field-Based Preparedness Project. The Project aims to support national actors as they strengthen their capacity to autonomously prepare for and respond to humanitarian crises. A key element of this is the facilitation of a coordinated approach towards improving the resilience of local humanitarian supply chains and supporting effective information exchange between the government, national actors and the private sector, to ensure all actors are well prepared for joint humanitarian logistics responses. In the event of a large-scale disaster, should the Government of Timor Leste request international humanitarian assistance, the Global Logistics Cluster capacities can support national actors in facilitating a coordinated response.
Timor-Leste, a small island nation-state located in the Ring of Fire, is prone to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, floods, storms, and forest fires. The rugged terrain, mountainous interior, and poor infrastructure make accessing remote communities difficult. Heavy rains from Tropical Cyclone Seroja in March 2021 caused severe flash floods and landslides across all municipalities, worsening the challenges posed by COVID-19. The crisis event caused widespread damage to infrastructure, disrupt livelihoods, and displace populations, straining humanitarian resources and requiring rapid and coordinated response.
The Civil Protection Authority (CPA) of Timor Leste is responsible for coordinating emergency responses across various sectors. CPA’s primary role is to ensure effective response coordination that contributes to the wider country emergency preparedness framework, i.e., the Integrated Civil Protection Operations System. CPA brings together key stakeholders including line ministries such as the Ministry of Public work, the National Logistics Centre – responsible for food movement and storage, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Transport, and the sub-national coordination sector taking the lead on the ground and are the first responders in emergency response.
The Seroja Cyclone highlighted the need for strengthening capability within the CPA as the national lead agency in emergency response coordination, as there were no preparedness plans, insufficient human resources, and inadequate coordination mechanisms in place. The FBPP aims to enhance the CPA's capabilities in humanitarian logistics preparedness using the Institutional Capacity Strengthening approach, particularly in managing logistics coordination among stakeholders to address common gaps, prevent duplication of efforts, and achieve shared priorities for an effective emergency response.
Since July 2024, a national Preparedness Officer (Logistics) has been taking up his role in the FBPP to commence the Project implementation process, collaborating closely with CPA through series of consultative meetings, activity planning, and engagement with various national logistics stakeholders. The Humanitarian Logistics Preparedness Inception workshops were organised in November 2024 and June 2025 respectively, to form a Logistics Technical Working Group (LTWG) to identify humanitarian logistics needs, challenges, and priorities. The LTWG will define key priorities and guide relevant agencies under the Ministry of Interior's leadership for disaster management.