pdf Data: Leaving No Indigenous Peoples Behind in the Achievement of the SDGs Popular

The population of indigenous peoples in the Philippines has not been reliably established until now. With the inclusion of an ethnicity variable in the 15th Census on Population and Housing in September 2020, we hope to finally see a close estimate of the number of indigenous peoples in the country and where they are with the inclusion of an ethnicity variable. Indigenous peoples have not been adequately and properly reflected in any census because of the lack of the proper ethnicity variable in the census tool, the questionable conduct of the census, and the lack of study on how best to make the census, or any national survey for that matter. In other words, indigenous peoples have been left behind.

Under the mantra of “Nothing about us, without us”, indigenous peoples the whole world over, together with partners, came out with the Indigenous Navigator Initiative to develop a tool to monitor the gaps in the enjoyment of indigenous peoples of both their individual and collective rights and make duty-bearers accountable, and also to help them devise implementation strategies for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). The UNDRIP does not have a monitoring mechanism and thus violations of indigenous peoples rights are often hidden under other categories and are not addressed properly, and often excluded from development efforts.