Indigenous Peoples and Indigenous Development: Operational Policy and Sector Strategy

This paper includes both a Policy (OP-765) and a Strategy (GN-2387-5). The objective of the Policy is to enhance the Bank's contribution to the development of indigenous peoples by two sets of directives. The first requires the Bank to use its best efforts to promote the development with identity of indigenous peoples. The second creates safeguards designed to prevent or minimize exclusion and adverse impacts that Bank operations might generate with respect to indigenous peoples and their rights. The Bank will support the region's national governments and indigenous peoples, as well as relevant private sector and civil society actors, in mainstreaming indigenous issues in local and national development agendas and in the Bank's project pipeline. It will pursue this through specific initiatives and, where technically feasible and appropriate, the integration of complementary activities, operations, and general initiatives. The objective of the Strategy is to guide the programming and execution of Bank activities and operations by developing lines of action and specific modalities in order to: (i) support national governments and indigenous peoples in promoting development with identity and the capacity for governance and institutional articulation of indigenous peoples; and (ii) avoid or mitigate the adverse impacts that Bank operations might have on indigenous peoples and their rights. In order to support development with identity, as defined earlier, the Bank plans to take action in three areas: (a) Strengthening the lands, territory and governance of traditional indigenous societies and economies (b) Reducing marginalization and exclusion in national society and (c) Enabling the comparative advantages of indigenous peoples based on their natural, cultural, and social capital to capitalize on an intercultural space to improve their quality of life.