Zero budget for NCIP! Fund genuine development for Indigenous Peoples!

The National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) is asking Congress for P1.831 billion for 2027, more than a billion pesos once again for an agency that has consistently failed to protect Indigenous Peoples and our ancestral lands.

For years, Indigenous Peoples have been told that the NCIP exists to protect our rights and promote our welfare. Yet across the country, our communities continue to confront land grabbing, militarization, displacement, corporate encroachment, criminalization, red-tagging, and attacks against Indigenous Peoples’ human rights defenders.

Our concerns over the proposed budget stem from a long history of questionable spending, weak accountability, and policies that have repeatedly failed to put Indigenous Peoples at the center of the NCIP’s work. We see a deeper, systemic problem within the agency. Instead of consistently standing with Indigenous communities in defending their ancestral lands and rights, the NCIP has repeatedly operated in ways that accommodate the interests of corporations and land-grabbers who seek to encroach on our ancestral lands.

This is reflected in the way their funds have been allocated. In 2026, P58.042 million of the NCIP’s budget was allocated to the PAyapa at MAsaganang PamayaNAn (PAMANA) Program, which relies on militaristic approaches implemented in Indigenous communities. NCIP also enjoyed the questionable P4 million “Extraordinary and Miscellaneous Expenses” listed under the NCIP’s Confidential, Intelligence, and Extraordinary Expenses. The NCIP has been spending on activities and projects that undermine our rights, militarize our communities, and place Indigenous Peoples at greater risk. 

Over the years, the Commission on Audit (COA) has flagged the NCIP for excessive spending, undocumented expenses, and misuse of funds—including millions spent on luxury events, anti-insurgency workshops, and a controversial 7-million-peso coffee table book project partially financed through donations solicited from mining companies. In a landmark 2025 ruling, the Supreme Court affirmed that NCIP officials had misappropriated funds intended for the Mamanwa Tribes of Surigao del Norte, diverting financial assistance for their own operational expenses.

These are not isolated accounting questions. They point to a deeper problem of accountability, governance, and respect for Indigenous Peoples' rights. While NCIP officials have access to public resources and government power, Indigenous Peoples are left to defend their territories with their own limited resources.

And we are told that the answer is to give NCIP another billion pesos? No.

NCIP: Violator of FPIC

The NCIP leadership has repeatedly acted as a facilitator for corporations seeking access to Indigenous territories.

This is most evident in the continuing problems surrounding Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC). FPIC is meant to protect Indigenous Peoples from unwanted projects and ensure that decisions are made freely, without manipulation, coercion, intimidation, or deception. But time and again, Indigenous communities have raised serious concerns about fraudulent, manipulated, rushed, and questionable FPIC processes involving mining, energy, infrastructure, and other projects.

The NCIP has been implicated in serious concerns over Indigenous land grabbing and questionable FPIC processes surrounding projects such as Makilala Mining in Kalinga, the Aboitiz solar project in Olongapo, Crescent Mining in Benguet, Northern Cement Corporation in Pangasinan, and the Gened Dams in Apayao.

Now the NCIP leadership has fast-tracked the revision of the FPIC Guidelines, blatantly making it easier for corporations to enter ancestral lands and territories.

The same is evident in the US-led Pax Silica Initiative and the Luzon Economic Corridor, which will displace Ayta communities from their ancestral lands. Rather than firmly asserting its mandate to protect Indigenous Peoples and their ancestral domains, the NCIP has engaged with the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) that has historically violated the rights of the Ayta communities. The agency has likewise been complicit in the increasing attacks against Indigenous rights defenders due to the Anti-Terror Law and other weaponized laws.

NCIP: Red-tagger

The NCIP leadership is also increasingly integrated into the government's counterinsurgency machinery.

NCIP Chairperson Nancy Catamco has assumed leadership responsibilities within the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), including the Sectoral Unification, Capacity Building, Empowerment, and Mobilization (SUCBEM) Cluster. For Indigenous Peoples, this is deeply alarming.

The NTF-ELCAC has been repeatedly criticized by Indigenous Peoples' organizations and human rights groups for red-tagging, vilification, harassment, and militarization of Indigenous communities and organizations.

Indigenous Peoples who defend our ancestral lands are branded as enemies and arbitrarily designated as terrorists by the NTF-ELCAC. Indigenous leaders who oppose destructive projects are red-tagged. Human rights defenders who expose violations are harassed and threatened. Community organizations are portrayed as security threats simply because they assert Indigenous Peoples' rights.

And now the very institution mandated to protect us is participating in this machinery.

The NCIP cannot claim to uphold Indigenous self-determination while its highest officials participate in a counterinsurgency mechanism that targets Indigenous communities and defenders.

The NCIP does not deserve a budget increase. In fact, it does not deserve the billions of pesos being poured into it. 

We thus call on the Senate to reject the proposed P1.831-billion NCIP budget for 2027 and to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the agency's expenditures, programs, policies, and senior officials.

We demand accountability from the NCIP Commission and its top officials. 

We call for a genuine review of the NCIP as an institution and the mechanisms supposedly established to protect Indigenous Peoples. 

The NCIP has had years and billions of pesos to prove that it can fulfill its mandate. Indigenous communities cannot afford another year of waiting while our lands are taken, our communities are militarized, and our rights are violated. Public funds must go where they can genuinely serve Indigenous Peoples—not programs, projects, and agencies like the NCIP that undermine these very rights.

Zero budget for NCIP. Fund genuine development for Indigenous Peoples. Abolish NCIP.