top of page

About the Author

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz is the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a position she has held since 2014. An indigenous leader hailing from the Kankanaey Igorot people in the Philippines’ Cordillera region, she has been fighting for the rights of Indigenous Peoples and rural women since the 1970s, when she helped build an indigenous movement that successfully stopped major dam and logging projects in the Cordillera region. 


Since then, Tauli-Corpuz has founded and managed several civil society organizations dedicated to the advancement of indigenous and women’s rights, including the Tebtebba Foundation, of which she serves as founder and executive director. She was engaged in the drafting and adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, and served as the Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues from 2005 to 2010. In 2009, she received the Gabriela Silang Award from the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples in recognition of the work she has done at the forefront of the struggle for Indigenous Peoples’ rights.


In March 2018, Tauli-Corpuz was placed on a list of “terrorists” by the Philippine government, alongside hundreds of other indigenous and human rights defenders, as retaliation for speaking up against the Duterte administration’s human rights violations. She continues to fight for Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and women around the world.

Read more about the Special Rapporteur on the website of OHCHR.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
bottom of page