Francelino Dos Santos Serra is a Timorese human rights defender and rights educator. He is working as an assistant lecturer and a human rights project officer at the National University of Timor Leste (UNTL).
Francelino was a passionate community rights activist before moving into academic teaching and research. As a student, he was mobilizing and organizing communities in support of human rights-related issues on and off the UNTL campus. The history of the Indonesian invasion of Timor Leste was one motivation to be a human rights activist.
“Hundreds of thousands of Timorese civilians were killed by the Indonesian military during the conflict. That conflict stripped away their rights and dignity.”
Another reason Francelino highlighted behind his passion for human rights is that many human rights, especially issues related to economic rights, social rights and cultural rights are persistently challenging. He sees it as very important to advocate more on the government as duty bearer to translate those rights to its citizens.
When UNTL established its Human Rights Centre, at the inspiration of President Jose Ramos-Horta, it began cooperation with Global Campus of Human Rights (GCHR), an association of around 100 universities around the world. Francelino joined the Human Rights Centre and helped to promote its partnership with DTP for human rights education and training and brought some DTP’s alumni met local NGO’s in after program. Francelino remembers his first training with DTP:
“DTP training was structured to translate human rights related knowledge into practical world. The highly effective training gave us tools and techniques to engage effectively with human rights advocacy and engaging with the UN.”
A highlight for Francelino was to meet UN experts who joined DTP as trainers.
“It was exciting because people we would normally see only in television ,DTP brought them close to us. We engaged and talked with them. It was memorable and a very useful experience.”
Following the training other participants invited him to Manila, Philippines to join a program organised by APNED (Asia-Pacific Network for Environmental Defenders). Francelino also said that DTP’s participatory training methodology inspired him in his own teaching of human rights.
Francelino said in future he wants to see that children in his country are learning about human rights and child rights from primary schools. On behalf of the HRC-UNTL he also wants to deliver regular human rights training for lecturers across all universities (private and public) so that they can teach their students about human rights. “Because fighting for human rights is everyone’s responsibility.”
Francelino attended the 31st Annual Regional Human Rights and Peoples Diplomacy Program Program, held in 2023 in Timor-Leste
