Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR).<sup>7</sup> This information has been collected from deponents to the Commission‘s statement-taking process.<sup>8</sup> We make use of data on the number of killings that occurred during the war in order to derive patterns and variation of violence in Timor Leste over time and across space. We use this data to identify districts and years that experienced high and low violence-intensity, both at the start of the occupation and following the withdrawal of Indonesian troops in 1999. This allows us to estimate both the impact of the first years of the conflict and the impact of the last wave of violence in 1999.

# **4.1. Identification strategy: The impact of violence on school attendance in 2001**

We first investigate the short-term impact of the 1999 violence. The empirical questions being addressed are: (i) whether the violence in 1999 imperiled school attendance<sup>9</sup> and school grade deficit, and (ii) whether different channels of exposure to conflict – displacement and house destruction – affected boys and girls and different age groups differently.

# **_4.1.1. Primary school attendance and grade deficit rates in 2001_**

We make use of information in TLSS 2001 collected at the individual and household levels on displacement and house destruction to identify conflict-affected individuals. We have constructed two different variables that try to account for the degree of severity of the conflict.<sup>10</sup> The first variable identifies individuals belonging to households that were displaced due to the 1999 wave of violence (all members displaced). The second variable identifies individuals in households that report having their house completely destroyed by the violent attacks in 1999.

The TLSS 2001 contains also useful retrospective information on school attendance and grade attained across three different academic years: 1998/99, 1999/00 and 2000/01. We are

> 7 Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation & Benetech Human Rights Data Analysis Group. ―Human Rights Violations Database.‖ 9 February, 2006. Website: http://www.hrdag.org/resources/timor-leste_data.shtml. 8 There may be potential sample biases in the statement taking procedure given the voluntary nature of the process. It is possible that those living in more remote or mountainous areas, those living far away from the areas where the statements were taken, the sick, old and disabled and those with no access to the media or means of mass communication have a lower probability of being part of the sample. By contrast, those more active in local communities are more likely to have provided a testimony. In order to address these potential sample biases, the CAVR supplemented its documentation with reports produced by Amnesty International and Fokupers (a local NGO). The information contained in these reports was then included into the HRVD database.

> 9 Note that we do not analyse school completion in 2001 because most children that were of school age in 1999 were still in school in 2001.

> 10 The questions we used are ―Was [NAME] displaced outside E. Timor in 1999?‖, and ―Was the [BUILDING] damaged in the violence of 1999?‖. 14% of the whole sample surveyed in 2001 report having been displaced, while 26% report that their house was destroyed. Within our sample of school age children, these figures are 16% and 25%, respectively. We have made sure that buildings that are reported to having been destroyed were used for living purposes only.

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