NCIP launches project for self-sustaining ICCs

THE National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) 11 on Wednesday launched its Philippine Indigenous Peoples Ethnographies (Pipes) program, which aims to vitalize resources that can help build selfsustaining Indigenous Cultural Communities all over the Philippines, at the Marco Polo Hotel in Davao City.

NCIP-Davao regional director Geroncio Aguio said the program is a flagship project of the

NCIP. It focuses on expansion activities of the core mandates of the commission. He added that the Pipes was developed in response to President Rodrigo Duterte’s directive to make use of the ancestral domains for rights-based developments of the IPs.

"This is also in response to the demands of the IPs who have over all 14 thematic concerns nationwide, particularly on ancestral domains. The commission aims to address the concerns of the IPS and the government agencies who would like to acquire the actual numbers of the IPs here in the region," Aguio said.

Pipes build on the experiences the past two-decades of recognizing, protecting, promoting, and fulfilling the rights of the IPs, as preserved in the 1987 Constitution and the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997. The Pipes is a multiyear project, with 2017 as the foundation year and 2022 as the completion year.

The Pipes describes the IPs from the perspectives of the IP themselves: locates where they are situated; presents a count of population; and describes their socio-economic conditions. It is a mechanism for coordination with those key government agencies that has programs, activities, plans and activities within the ancestral domains and with the IPs.

Pipes provides the baseline and mechanism where protective, conservation, and development plans may be built on and pursued; promotes cultural regeneration, focused on supporting the enhancement of the capacities of leaders, based on their indigenous political structure.

It also supports the enhancement of capacities of the NCIP, in the fulfillment of its mandate to protect and promote the rights of the Indigenous Cultural Communities (ICCs)/IPs; and provides support in the formulation enabling programs for the IP Peace Agenda.

Aguio said the commission has allocated P207-million for the PIPEs program. He added that the purpose of the funds is to acquire equipment for survey, to hold capacity trainings, and to create technical working group that can operate the mandates of the Pipes.

Pipes aims to achieve sevenvolume ethnographies, showing the diversity of the peoples within the 7-ethnographic Regions; Census of Population and Housing; Ground-Truthed Maps, ready for overlaying with maps generated by the other government agencies and civil society organizations (CSOs), among others.

It also aims to achieve a socio-economic profile of the IPs; national consortium, a coordinative platform composed of government agencies, non-government organizations (NGOs), and experts/professionals; have thematic outputs; re-formulation and formulation of the new Ancestral Domain Sustainable Development and Protection Plan (ADSDPP).

The major activities of the Pipes are on personnel and communities, and institutional capacities enhancement, boost networks and cooperation and policy field. This is to make data available, address the issues and concerns of the IPs, lessons learned be documented and ethnography be promoted.