Philippines: Country Technical Note on Indigenous Peoples’ Issues

There are no exact figures on the population of indigenous peoples in the Philippines because of the lack of an ethnicity variable in earlier national census instruments.

Various sources estimate the population of indigenous peoples in the Philippines at 12-15% of the current national population of 108 million, or a total of about 16-17 million. They belong to more than 110 identified ethno-linguistic groups and are spread out in 65 of the country’s provinces. The majority of indigenous peoples (63%) are found in Mindanao, followed by Luzon at 34 percent, and Visayas at 3 percent (NCIP 2018).