4. Centers of Excellence in Village Governance

The Centers of Excellence in Village Governance (COE- VG) programme builds on AIPP’s Indigenous Peoples’ Self-Government and Democracy course—launched in 2021—which focuses on leadership capacity building and grassroots community mobilization. It also integrates the Indigenous Community Protocols Initiative, led by PACOS Trust, which has been actively evolving for two decades.

This project unites the self-government movements that underpin both initiatives, leveraging their visions and scaling up lessons-learned to enhance indigenous governance at the community level.

Both projects emphasize self-governance and sovereignty over lands, territories, and resources as a fundamental goal for Indigenous Peoples in Asia. The Self-government and Democracy course is aimed at reviving and recovering Indigenous Peoples’ governance systems through critical reflection and identification of the core values and principles governing and organizing indigenous societies.

Its primary objective is to cultivate a pool of indigenous leaders well-versed in the knowledge and practice of indigenous governance systems such that the nucleus for a regional movement for indigenous sovereignty, self-government, and democratization can be consolidated and advanced in Asia.

Indigenous Community Protocols are self-determined governance tools, created by and for indigenous communities to guide collective decision-making and external engagements. By documenting customary institutions, rules, and regulations rooted in indigenous worldviews, values, and principles, these protocols reinforce collective governance structures. In doing so, they uphold Indigenous Peoples’ inherent right to self-determination and strengthen their autonomous governance systems.

Through the Centers of Excellence initiative, AIPP partners with indigenous communities to recognize and amplify self-governing communities that are revitalizing their customary institutions. These communities will serve as foundational models driving a long-term movement for indigenous self-determination and participatory democracy. By showcasing their success, they will inspire and strengthen other indigenous communities in reclaiming and advancing their own governance systems.

Building on the two established Centers of Excellence in Village Governance (COE-VG) in Thailand and Sabah- Malaysia, the initiative continues to expand. Several promising communities in Malaysia and Thailand have been identified as potential future COE-VGs, with plans underway to recognize additional exemplary communities across other countries in the region.

The COE-VG initiative is designed to catalyze a self- governing movement across the region through organic, community-driven expansion. As participating communities strengthen their governance systems and revitalize traditional knowledge, they naturally become mentors and resources for neighboring indigenous groups. This creates a powerful ripple effect where:

• Knowledge and capacity grow exponentially through peer-to-peer learning;
• Best practices evolve as more communities adapt and refine governance models;
• A regional network emerges of interconnected self-governing communities; and
• Collective self-determination strengthens as more groups develop customized governance plans and institutions.

To scale up this initiative across indigenous communities in Asia, candidate communities are identified and prioritized based on their demonstrated commitment and established practices in the following key areas:

1. Indigenous knowledge and cultural revitalization: Rediscovering, recovering, and reconnecting with their worldviews, values, principles and practices to empower and strengthen their community-led governance structure.
2. Strong land, territory and resource protection and management: Asserting indigenous governance over ancestral territories, upholding sustainable resource management rooted in traditional ecological knowledge, and resisting environmental encroachment through community-led protection systems.
3. Strong institutions: Reinforcing customary guardianship, full and meaningful participation of all community members—across generations, genders, and social groups—in collective decision- making, conflict resolution, and the administration of customary justice systems.
4. Resilient, community-based livelihood systems: Aspiring to an adaptive and resilient livelihood system based on a diversified and cooperative model, collective resource sharing of goods, labour and knowledge, enhanced self- reliance, and the conservation of local plant and animal species.
5. Strong indigenous leadership: Leadership rooted in ancestral values and worldview, practicing consensus-based collective governance, nurturing inter-generational knowledge transmission, cultivating distributed leadership across genders and generations, and advancing self-determined education systems.
6. Gender and intergenerational equity in governance: Actively advancing women’s and youth leadership through distributed power structures, ensuring full participation at all decision-making levels, grounded in both universal human rights principles and indigenous cultural values, and fostering an intercultural approach to rights-based governance.
7. Vision for the care of our common good: Honoring the profound material and spiritual interdependence of all existence, rooting governance in ancestral values of mutual respect and reciprocity and cultivating holistic and collective wellbeing.

AIPP’s hope is that during the Strategic Plan tenure, there will be CoE-VGs established in several countries, facilitated and supported by AIPP. Each CoE-VG will be serving as a dynamic regional hub for indigenous governance innovation and peer learning.

And we expect that more communities would have also prepared and adopted their own customized Community Protocols as tools for improved territorial and resource governance.

Through these CoE-VGs, we hope to cultivate a new generation of indigenous leaders who are deeply rooted in indigenous values and indigenous governance systems. They will be equipped with tools and knowledge to overcome systemic barriers to self-determination and autonomy.