The World Bank has introduced its Indigenous Peoples Engagement Strategy to enhance the visibility of Indigenous Peoples (IPs) in the Philippines, aiming to increase awareness of their development challenges and improve social inclusion. The strategy comprises four key pillars: dialogue, partnerships, analytics and knowledge sharing, and policy and operations.
The dialogue pillar seeks to actively engage with IP leaders and government counterparts. The partnerships pillar involves collaboration with civil society organizations, academia, and other development partners. Analytics and knowledge sharing aim to provide empirical evidence on the challenges facing IPs, raising awareness among World Bank technical teams and government institutions. The policy and operations pillar will use data to inform policy recommendations and project design to address the needs of IPs and other ethnic minorities.
The first report by the World Bank, titled "No Data, No Story: Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines," was launched to assess the main challenges facing Indigenous Peoples in the country. This report emphasizes the importance of data in addressing the unique needs of IP communities, offering recommendations for policymakers.
Additionally, a workshop on developing national standards and guidelines for data collection and statistics was conducted. This workshop, which builds on the launch of the World Bank report, aims to incorporate ethnicity indicators into official statistics and standardize data collection for indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities in national surveys and administrative systems.