USAID Policy on Promoting the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Landscape Analysis

A landscape analysis was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago to build an internal knowledge base and analysis framework on how Operating Units (OUs) are including Indigenous Peoples into development activities. The analysis involved reviewing over 200 USAID documents and solicitations, conducting semi-structured interviews with 16 OUs, and reviewing seven relevant policies of bilateral and multilateral donors and 14 publications from Indigenous Peoples' organizations. The analysis revealed mixed results in implementing the PRO-IP's objectives and operating principles. Operating Unit staff are working hard to adapt and apply the policy, but face numerous barriers that are often specific to their region or context. Indigenous Peoples' concerns across sectors and portfolios were commonly considered with written analyses conducted at the beginning of activities. However, depth of engagement and communication with Indigenous Peoples varied greatly depending on the nature and objective of the activity or program. A gap was observed in the standardization and documentation of processes to identify Indigenous Peoples within the context of the relevant geographic zone, establish rules of engagement, engage with Indigenous Peoples through every stage of the program cycle, and distinguish unique impacts and considerations of Indigenous Peoples' rights separate from those of other social groups and populations of interest. Objective 2 of PRO-IP promotes the integration of Indigenous Peoples' concerns across USAID sectors and portfolios, involving the standardization of tools and approaches to assessing Indigenous Peoples' concerns and planning to address them. The analysis found that the specific tools outlined in the PRO-IP, such as Social Inclusion Analysis (SIA) or Inclusive Development Analysis (IDA), were not being used in projects. While OU staff clearly recognized the importance of conducting analyses to understand equity concerns and identify risks, they sometimes were not aware of PRO-IP tools, or found that other existing tools were better suited to their specific context. Pre-existing tools like Political Economy Analyses or Gender Equity and Social Inclusion (GESI) analyses that are similar in scope and purpose were more consistently used. However, with these tools, Indigenous Peoples are often considered as one category in a list of 'vulnerable populations', when they should be considered separately since they can refuse development activities if their right to free, prior, and informed consent is respected. Additionally, there were deeply rooted challenges with labelling populations as indigenous in Africa and Asia due to political sensitivities in these regions. In terms of empowerment for Indigenous Peoples (Objective 3 of PRO-IP), projects were highly aligned with the PRO-IP guidance to partner closely with Indigenous Peoples' organizations, but there were consistent challenges with capacity building to allow these organizations to meet USAID's reporting and administrative requirements. This was part of why NORC found a trend in smaller-scale grants for any direct funding to Indigenous Peoples; larger scale direct funds were very rare and concentrated in certain regions and sectors. Trends in monitoring, evaluation, and learning indicate that while many programs include Indigenous Peoples in their indicator frameworks, a majority of program indicators disaggregate program outcomes by Indigenous Peoples in the same manner as other social groups. We observed that these monitoring frameworks did not often present the criteria of who is considered Indigenous in order to accurately measure outcomes, did not clearly document Indigenous Peoples' own definition or determination of outcome "achievement", and did not always measure the quality of engagement with Indigenous Peoples. Objective 4 of the PRO-IP focuses on improving the enabling environment for Indigenous Peoples and their organizations to advocate for their rights and promotes activities to reform or improve domestic legal frameworks. NORC found that many projects included analysis of domestic legal frameworks surrounding Indigenous Peoples as either background research or part of the USAID Gender Equity and Social Inclusion analysis. However, in terms of project activities to reform these frameworks, there were few projects that had activities specifically aimed at enacting policy change or increasing knowledge on legal rights, and they tended to be "stand alone" projects clustered in specific regions and sectors. In terms of solicitations, NORC found that most OUs are not fully incorporating PRO-IP guidance in their solicitation process or evaluation criteria. However, this general trend masks high levels of variability between OUs and regions. NORC found that direct funding opportunities are increasing, but these are for small grants generally. While many of the solicitations had language around general capacity building activities (Objective 3 of the PRO-IP), only two included language on offering capacity building assistance to help Indigenous Peoples compete for and manage direct funding from USAID.