“The Mining Act of 1985 has had the biggest impact on the land rights of indigenous peoples. Majority of mining applications and operations are found within ancestral domains and in environmentally critical areas.” the contract-based resource management agreements between the state and the community as it recognizes the “ownership” of the indigenous community over their traditional territories which include land, bodies of water and all other natural resources therein. Furthermore, the IPRA provides tenurial security to the community with issuance of an ownership title to the concerned indigenous clan or community. The IPRA included “self delineation” as the guiding principle in the identification of ancestral domain claims. However, due to the lack of resources and skills in the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), the government has not been able to provide the necessary services to the IP sector to realize this mandate and issue the necessary titles. In its first three years of existence, the NCIP was not able to issue a single CADT, rather it certified community consent for dozens of mining applications, an act which it had no legal power to effect under the IPRA. Initial findings of the Office of the President’s Performance Audit of the NCIP reveal that the agency is ill-equipped, the staff poorly trained and lacking field experience or appropriate cultural sensitivity to handle land 104 conflicts and issues of resource access affecting indigenous communities. With an average budget of P500 million for its national operations and a staffing pattern beleaguered by a lack of capacity and skills, the NCIP faces severe constraints in serving the aspirations of the indigenous peoples’ sector. Thus it is actively seeking the help of the private sector, in particular members of civil society who have had extensive experience in the field of ancestral domain claims and community mapping. Eighteen years hence, so much still remains to be done. To date, very limited development activities in support of the Ancestral Domain Management Plans have been implemented in the IP areas. Problems in the implementation of the IPRA continue to fester and severely limit the capacity of indigenous communities to truly benefit from the mandate of the IPRA. The inability of the government to fully implement the IPRA in order to address the problems and concerns of the indigenous communities is rooted in conflicting policies, capacity gaps and a questionable commitment to empower indigenous communities. Ranged against all odds, as of 2015 the following have been awarded; 158 Certificate of Ancestral Domain Titles (CADTs), 258 Certificate of Ancestral Land Titles (CALTs) with a total coverage of 4,323,782.722 ha or 14% of the total land area of the Philippines. There are still 557 applications that are pending or in process with a total area of 2,670,101.20 ha. Assessment of Key Actors The most important contributions of the IPRA is the institutionalization of the principle of self- Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ANGOC)