Report Launch No Data, No Story: Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines

Ndiamé Diop oversees the World Bank program in Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand. He leads the policy dialogue with government counterparts, civil society, academia and other partners.

The Bank program in Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand is a mixture of cutting-edge analytics and advisory services and lending operations focused on financially and technically supporting the countries’ development agenda. The World Bank team produces both inbound knowledge to support the four countries’ key reforms and outbound knowledge to share these countries’ innovative development achievements with other developing countries.  

Undersecretary Aliah Dimaporo has an extensive career on social development in the Philippines and abroad. She was the International Director of Operations for the World Youth Alliance and, eventually, the Executive Director, managing 6 regional offices worldwide. She also worked as congressional Chief of Staff for the 2nd District of Lanao del Norte and later served as Representative of the 2nd District of Lanao del Norte in the 15th Congress. On July 31, 2023, she was appointed Undersecretary at the Department of Social Welfare and Development to lead the Legislative Liaison and Coordination Group.

Chair Sibug-Las is a mother, IP rights and OFW refugees advocate, renowned as Princess or “BO-I” of the Obu-Manuvu IP group, being the only daughter of the late Datu Joseph Guabong Sibug, the first ICC/IP Sectoral Representative in Congress. 

Chair Sibug-Las has received various recognitions for her advocacy work on behalf IPs in the Philippines. Prior to her current appointment, she served the Indigenous Peoples as Tribal Affairs Officer from 1999-2001 and as Provincial Legal Officer of NCIP North Cotabato Province from 2009-2014. 

Concurrently, she chairs various Technical Working Groups on IP and BARMM concerns and serves as the Ethnographic Commissioner for Central Mindanao. 

Carlos specializes in social and environmental risk management of large high-risk infrastructure projects. Currently, he is a Social Safeguards Coordinator for Brunei, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. Prior to joining the World Bank, he was a social specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) in Washington, DC, a social sector specialist at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and a visiting scholar at the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in Mexico.

Nadia Belhaj Hassine is a Senior Economist with the East Asia Poverty Global Practice covering Thailand and the Philippines. Prior to that, she worked on poverty in Tanzania, Burundi, Sudan, Gabon, Cameroon, Comoros and Madagascar. Prior to joining the World Bank she was Senior Program Specialist with Canada International Development Research Center. She also taught in many universities including the University of Toulouse in France and University of Nabeul in Tunisia. Her research areas are poverty and inequality, agricultural economics and applied econometrics. She has published many articles in academic journals including World Development, The World Bank Economic Review, European Review of Agricultural Economics and  Journal of Development Studies.

Janmejay Singh is the Practice Manager for Social Sustainability and Inclusion for East Asia and the Pacific. In this role, Janmejay oversees operational and analytical work program on community driven development, gender, citizen engagement, social cohesion, and application of the environmental and social framework in the region.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz is the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and former Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. She is an indigenous leader from the Kankana-ey Igorot people of the Cordillera Region in the Philippines. As an indigenous activist, she has worked for decades on building movement among indigenous peoples and as an advocate for women's rights. 

member of the Council for Climate and Conflict Action Asia (CCAA) and former Country Director of International Conflict Alert Philippines. Nikki has decades of professional experience in politico-economic research and program management, working with international and local NGOs, and academia. During her time in International Conflict Alert, Ms de la Rosa provided support in providing data and information for the report.

Dr. Domingo has more than three decades of extensive multisector technical and policy research exposure in agricultural research and development and extension, natural resource management, and disaster risk reduction and management. His research interests include ecological integrity and environmental policy, technical agriculture and resource economics, and climate change and disaster risk management.