Farewell Nino
I was really shocked to lose Nino, a friend I've watched grow for decades and keep his youthful spirit. Together with a mutual friend, Sophia, we wrote an obituary for The Guardian. While we were grateful to memorialise him in this way, it didn't quite make it through the editorial process intact. Here's the original we wrote together.
Our dear friend Fausto Belo Ximenes, known as Nino, who died recently at the age of 43, was brilliant, always curious, funny and stylish. He worked incredibly hard, and achieved what he set out to do, including becoming one of the first Timorese country directors of a major humanitarian agency (Oxfam) in his home country of Timor-Leste.
Nino grew up on the slopes of Mount Matebian, during the Indonesian occupation, in the years after Indonesia’s relentless bombing campaign on the mountain. He said in retrospect it was a time of profound fear.
In 1999, when Indonesia retreated from the territory destroying everything and massacring civilians, at the age of 17, Nino 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 (UN) administration as an interpreter.
We first met him as this bright young man, who had postponed his formal education to learn firsthand about human rights and development. Even then he had a constructively critical sensibility, with unbounded energy and genuine care for others.
Whether being stranded in the middle of a rice paddy after a breakdown, or searching for an open dry cleaner on a Sunday in Manhattan, Nino was the perfect, upbeat companion.
His intelligence, love of reading and work ethic led him to academic success. Nino graduated in 2017 with a Master of Public Policy (MPP) from the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, the first East Timorese student to graduate with a degree from Oxford, a town with a disproportionately large Timorese population.
In his prior Masters degree in Human Rights, Nino was also the first East Timorese Erasmus scholar, and he delighted in his time studying at the Arctic University of Norway in Trondheim.
He most recently held a prestigious Yale World Fellow post in 2024, 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.
Prior to Oxfam, Nino worked as a Graduate Researcher at Oxford’s Changing Character of War (CCW) Centre, a Senior Access to Justice Manager on a USAID project, an adviser to the Timorese Ministry of Education, a Human Rights Officer with UN, and a legal researcher with a local NGO monitoring transitional justice.
Nino dreamed of a big life from the village where he was raised and he made it happen. And his dream wasn’t just for him, but for his newly independent country.
Nino is survived by his parents Rosa Vitória and Vítor Belo Ximenes, a nurse, his nine siblings, and a large extended family in Quelicai, Timor-Leste.
We're currently working on endowing a prize for young people to remember Nino in Timor Leste. If you'd like to contribute, please contact me directly.