The United Nations-sanctioned intervention in Timor-Leste in 1999 occurred at a time when liberal peacebuilding efforts were in the ascendancy around the world. The end of the Cold War resulted in a UN Security Council far less encumbered by superpower rivalry, leading in turn to a sharp rise in the number and scale of peace interventions (Paris 2004). As did Kosovo the same year, Timor-Leste symbolised the apotheosis of liberal interventionism as the United Nations Transitional Authority in Timor-Leste (UNTAET) became the territory's governing authority. UNTAET was granted sovereign power and tasked with creating the political and economic structures to enable the transition to national independence. In response to the violence and devastation wrought by the vacating Indonesian military and militia, the approach of UNTAET – alongside other donors, state agencies, and civil society organisations – continued broadly along the same trajectory as earlier interventions as peace was imagined in liberal terms (Richmond 2006, 292; Richmond 2008, 186-189; Selby 2013, 57).

While UNTAET formally closed when Timor-Leste became an independent nation-state in May 2002, subsequent UN missions continued until the United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT) ended in 2012. While this final withdrawal signalled a confidence in the consolidation of the East Timorese state, there are limits to the extent to which this may be understood as the attainment of peace per se.