Executive Summary
This is a report of the 2017 National Inquiry on the Human Rights Situation of Filipino Indigenous
Peoples (IP) convened by the Commission on Human Rights (CHR). The Key Findings of the
Inquiry are:
A. On right to ancestral domains and lands
1. Joint Administrative Order Number 1 Series of 2012 constitutes a violation of IP rights to be
awarded Certificates of Ancestral Domain Titles (CADT) that sets the metes and bounds of
their domains and allows them to assert rights within those boundaries against those
operating to deny them the exercise of priority rights in developing said domains.
2. Pending congressional enactment of the National Land Use Act and an act to finance the
ADSDPPs (Ancestral Domain Sustainable Development Protection Plan), there is no clear
State assistance to development of Ancestral Domains along the planning done by the IPs
through their ADSDPPs.
3. No effort has been made to study the disestablishment of government reservations in order
to restore Ancestral Domains.
B. On the right to self-governance and empowerment
4. The FPIC requirement has been uniformly violated by both State & non-State duty bearers 1.
5. Remedies appropriate to IP cultures are hindered by the State when IPs are forced to litigate
in adversarial courts of justice.
6. Police power and law enforcement for customary law decisions and domains protection as a
measure of IP empowerment is not recognized and supported by the State. There is no
provision in the IPRA or its implementing rules on customary law enforcement through
traditional enforcers who are inherent in the societal structures of every tribal society.
7. The peace process in the ARMM and efforts toward federalism render IP Rights nebulous
and require re-definition of IP political status and relations with the State. Both islamized and
non-islamized IPs affected by the peace process should enjoy the protection of the IPRA
(Indigenous Peoples Rights Act). Passage of the BBL (Bangsamoro Basic Law) must include
mechanisms to protect IP rights such as those endorsed to Congress by the MIPLA
(Mindanao IP Legislative Assembly) for the creation of an independent IP commission and
for a transitory committee to establish rules for its creation and definition of its powers.
C. Right to social justice and human rights
8. The state is deficient in gathering and dis-aggregating data on IP women, IP youth & children,
internally displaced IPs and IP elderly to render them specific targets of government
assistance and expenditures. There is insufficient monitoring of IP rights to access to basic
services as well as IP collective rights to ancestral domains development.
9. Displacement of IPs and extrajudicial executions of IP and IP rights defenders are at alarming
levels and government remedies and prosecutions are slow to respond to this.
1
Duty-bearers are those actors who have a particular obligation or responsibility to respect, promote and realize
human rights and to abstain from human rights violations. The term is most commonly used to refer to State actors,
but non-State actors can also be considered duty-bearers.
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