The present article identifies a tension between the two main mandates of the UN's administration of East Timor: community-building on the one hand and human rights promotion on the other. While originally planned to accompany each other, in practice the goal of human rights promotion took over, perhaps on the basis of the thought that serious community-building presupposes that a catalogue of human rights (including enforcement machinery) is in place. This thesis, however, is debatable, and it is even thinkable that an emphasis on human rights forms an obstacle to community-building.