PRO 169 aims at promoting the rights and improving the socio-economic situation of indigenous and tribal peoples, in compliance with the principles of ILO Convention No. 169. PRO 169 is based within the International Labour Standards Department of the ILO and has field coordinators in a number of ILO offices.
PRO 169 works on a wide range of thematic as well as regional and country-specific issues. PRO 169 combines a flexible demand-driven approach, responding to emerging needs and opportunities at international, regional and national levels with longer-term strategic initiatives at regional and country-level.
At the international level, PRO 169 contributes to coordination through the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the Inter-Agency Support Group, and has an ongoing dialogue with specialized technical staff in other agencies, in order to ensure sharing of information, experiences and lessons learned.
Within the ILO, PRO 169 is developing tools and mechanisms to facilitate a better institutional embedding of the issues relevant to indigenous peoples. The increased focus on mainstreaming has strengthened the focus on indigenous issues within the ILO and the linkages with other relevant programmes and units at HQ, in the regions and with the ILO International Training Centre in Turin, Italy.
In Africa, comprehensive research on the situation of indigenous peoples is undertaken in collaboration with the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights and country-level activities in Cameroon, Kenya and Namibia are addressing policy reform, capacity-building of government and indigenous partners as well as local economic development.
In Asia, the focus is on dialogue and conflict resolution as well as policy reform and capacity-building of indigenous and government partners. In September 2007, a major achievement was reached as Nepal ratified Convention No. 169 as part of the current peace and state reform process.
In Latin America, PRO 169 is increasingly responding to needs and requests for technical cooperation related to the implementation of Convention No. 169 identified through the ILO supervisory bodies.
Most activities supported through PRO 169 include a strong element of information dissemination, training and capacity-building. The programme has developed a number of initiatives, addressing the information, training and capacity-building needs of several and very different target groups ranging from national governments and social partners to indigenous fellows and interns. The strategy takes into account the different levels of intervention (community, local, and national, regional, international) as well as the diversity of target groups, which necessitates a diversity of entry points, modalities, tools and languages.
As part of its information dissemination work, PRO 169 issues an annual newsletter as well as a series of thematic publications and training materials.