Abstract:
Philippines has a total land area of 30 million hectares, half of which is mostly categorized as Forest Zone. Indigenous peoples (IPs) occupy more than 10 million hectares of the country‘s total landmass. There are about 12-15 million IPs (as of 2015), which comprises 10-20% of the Philippines‘ total population (which has been projected to currently lie at 102.9 million). There are currently 112 ethno linguistic groups in the Philippines and they are mainly concentrated in Mindanao and Northern Luzon, with some groups in the Visayas region. IPs until now remain to be the most impoverished and marginalized sectors of the Philippines. Like their global counterparts, they are ranked among the poorest and most disadvantaged sector. The Human Rights Situation of Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines (2008) cited three areas of human rights violations experienced by IPs in the Philippines: politically motivated killings, militarization of the ancestral territories of IPs, and the violation of their collective rights to land and natural resources. This study gives more emphasis on the violation of their collective rights to land and natural resources. Most of the country‘s IPs rely on traditional agriculture utilizing the upland areas as they are push to these geographically isolated areas due to the influx of migrant farmers, government projects and other development projects promoted by the government. [Introduction]
