My friend Fausto Belo Ximenes, known as Nino, who has died suddenly aged 43, was one of the first Timorese country directors of a major humanitarian agency (Oxfam) in his home country of Timor-Leste.
Before Oxfam, Nino worked as a human rights officer with the UN (2001), as a legal researcher with a local NGO monitoring transitional justice (2002), as an adviser to the Timorese ministry of education (2012), as a senior access to justice manager on a USAID project (2013) and as a graduate researcher at Pembroke College, Oxford (2018).
Born in Quelicai, Timor-Leste, Nino was the sixth of the 10 children of Rosa Vitória and Vítor Belo Ximenes, a nurse. He grew up on the slopes of Mount Matebian, during the Indonesian occupation. In retrospect he viewed it as a time of profound fear.
He went to high school in Baucau and in 1999, when Indonesia retreated from the territory, destroying everything and massacring civilians, he fled to the jungle. One of the few things he took with him during his 10 days in hiding was an English dictionary, and he learned enough English to get a job with the incoming United Nations administration as an interpreter.
He postponed his formal education to learn about human rights and development. His intelligence, love of reading and work ethic led him to academic success. In 2008 he moved to the UK to study for master’s degree in human rights at Roehampton University, London – and was said to be the first East Timorese Erasmus scholar. Nino graduated in 2017 with a master of public policy (MPP) from the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik school of government.
In 2024 he took up a world fellow post at Yale, where he reflected on his life and work leading teams in post-conflict societies. The World Fellows Program wrote of his “relentless optimism” in a tribute.
Whether being stranded in the middle of a rice paddy or searching for a dry cleaner on a Sunday in Manhattan, Nino was the perfect, upbeat companion.
He is survived by his parents and his nine siblings.
