From Colonial Oversight to Indigenous Rights: The ILO's Century-Long Journey

The ILO and the Colonial Question: a fraught beginning

Founded in 1919 under the Treaty of Versailles, the International Labour Organization (ILO), was built on the conviction that social justice and enduring peace were inseparable. Its Constitution enshrined the principle that labour conditions causing injustice and hardship were a threat to universal peace – a commitment later reaffirmed and expanded by the Declaration of Philadelphia in 1944. Yet from its very inception, the Organization operated within a world defined by colonial hierarchies. Its early engagement with indigenous and tribal peoples was therefore not born of emancipation, but of imperial tutelage.

In the interwar period, indigenous workers in non-self-governing territories were framed by the ILO under the label of "native labour", a category that revealed as much about the racial and political configuration of the time as it did about the actual conditions of the workers involved. The so-called Native Labour Code, developed through a series of early conventions distinct from the International Labour Code, sought to regulate forced labour, recruitment, and working conditions in colonial territories. While these labour standards did introduce minimum protections, they simultaneously reinforced the framework of colonial oversight: indigenous peoples were conceived as subjects requiring external guidance, not as rights-holders capable of determining their own futures. This founding tension between protection and paternalism would define the ILO’s engagement with the indigenous issue for decades to come.

Latin America as a laboratory: Indigenismo and the "Indian Problem"

The expansion of ILO activities in Latin America during the 1930s and 1940s introduced a new dimension to this debate. In the Americas, the colonial question did not present itself in the same terms as in Africa or Asia. Indigenous populations were not subjects of European empires but citizens – formally, at least – of independent states. Yet their social, economic, and cultural marginalisation was just as severe. 

Into this context entered Indigenismo: a Latin American intellectual and political movement that framed the condition of indigenous communities as the central obstacle to national development and social cohesion, the so-called "Indian problem." Rather than celebrating indigenous cultures as autonomous and valuable, Indigenismo largely portrayed them as realities to be transformed through education, economic integration, and gradual assimilation into the national society.

The ILO engaged seriously with these debates, and a series of regional labour conferences – held in Santiago (1936), Havana (1939), Mexico City (1946), and Montevideo (1949) – became critical forums for exchanging experiences and shaping policy. Through these encounters, Latin American states asserted themselves as active participants in an institution previously dominated by the European logic. They urged the ILO to treat the indigenous question not as a peripheral colonial matter but as a central concern of international labour governance. As a result, the region came to function as both a site of experimentation and a source of normative innovation.

The Andean Indian Programme: applied anthropology in practice

The most concrete expression of this experimental approach was the Andean Indian Programme (AIP), launched in the early 1950s across Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. The AIP was an ambitious multilateral initiative designed to improve the living and working conditions of Andean indigenous communities through a combination of technical assistance, infrastructure development, and crucially applied anthropology.

Anthropologists and social scientists were deployed to study community structures, cultural practices, and economic conditions, with the explicit aim of adapting interventions to local realities. This was a genuinely innovative methodology: the Organization was not simply imposing universal standards from above but attempting to ground its work in empirical knowledge of specific communities. Particularly, the Committee of Experts on Indigenous Labour, which guided much of this work, combined fieldwork with policymaking in ways that were unusual for an international organisation.

And yet the AIP's limitations were equally significant. Despite its sensitivity to cultural difference, the Programme remained anchored in an integrationist logic: its ultimate goal was the incorporation of indigenous communities into national economies and societies, not the recognition of their right to define their own development paths. Indigenous peoples were the objects of intervention, not agents of change. Although the Andean Indian Programme left behind a body of empirical knowledge that would later prove influential, its dismantlement exposed an operational model characterized by fundamental contradictions: its approach had sought to protect without empowering.

Convention No. 107: codifying integration

The lessons of the Andean experiment fed directly into the drafting of Convention No. 107, adopted at the International Labour Conference in 1957. This was the first international instrument dedicated specifically to the rights and conditions of indigenous and tribal peoples – a landmark in the history of international law.

Convention No. 107 introduced obligations for states to protect indigenous communities, regulate their land rights, ensure access to education and healthcare, and prevent exploitative labour practices. In the context of the late 1950s, this represented a genuine advance: indigenous peoples were no longer invisible in international law. Yet Convention No. 107 was deeply shaped by the integrationist assumptions of its era. Indigenous cultures were implicitly framed as transitional, destined to be overcome on the path to modernization rather than as legitimate ways of life deserving protection. The concept of cultural diversity appeared not as a value to be celebrated, but as a challenge to be managed.

Furthermore, its supervisory mechanisms proved largely ineffective. Ratifications were limited and states that had formally accepted its standards applied them unevenly. Convention No. 107 thus embodied both the ambitions and the structural weaknesses of the ILO's postwar approach: normatively progressive in intent, but operationally constrained and conceptually assimilationist in practice.

Convention No. 169: a paradigm shift and its limits

By the 1970s and 1980s, the inadequacy of Convention No. 107 had become impossible to ignore. The 1983 Martínez Cobo Report, commissioned by the United Nations, documented in exhaustive detail the conditions of indigenous peoples worldwide and offered a powerful critique of assimilationist policies. Simultaneously, transnational indigenous movements were gaining momentum, bringing their claims to international forums with increasing effectiveness. A turning point came in 1977, when the Non-Governmental Organization Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations, held in Geneva, marked the apex of a decade of organizational efforts by indigenous groups to secure visibility within the UN system. That same year, the World Council of Indigenous Peoples brought the demand for self-determination to the forefront of international debates, urging a decisive shift away from the integrationist model. These mobilizations paved the way for the establishment, in 1981, of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations – an open forum where indigenous organizations from across the world could voice their concerns and contribute directly to shaping international norms. Together, these developments created a normative and political context in which the integrationist premises of Convention No. 107 became increasingly untenable.

Within the ILO, there was initial reluctance to revisit a convention that had only recently entered into force. But the pressure proved compelling. After several years of consultations and revision processes, Convention No. 169 was adopted in 1989, replacing its predecessor and marking a decisive conceptual rupture.

The new instrument explicitly rejected the principle of assimilation. In its place, it introduced the principles of consultation, participation, and the recognition of indigenous and tribal peoples as collective rights-holders. States were required to consult indigenous communities before undertaking decisions likely to affect them – a provision that would reverberate across domestic legal systems, constitutional reforms, and peace agreements in the decades that followed. Particularly in Latin America, Convention No. 169 became a cornerstone of what scholars have labeled as multicultural constitutionalism, reshaping the relationship between states and indigenous peoples across the continent.

Yet a closer reading of the Convention reveals that the break with the past was not as complete as its rhetoric suggested. Many of its provisions continued to prescribe policy standards for state action on behalf of indigenous communities, rather than empowering those communities to act independently. Participation was often conceived as a mechanism for facilitating inclusion within existing political and economic structures and not as a pathway to genuine self-determination. The language of integration had disappeared; the logic of development and of state-led improvement, had not.

Convention No. 169 is therefore best understood as a hybrid instrument: situated between reform and continuity, between the rights-based framework it aspired to embody and the institutional constraints it could not fully transcend.

Conclusion: between progress and persistence

The ILO's century-long engagement with indigenous peoples traces a path from colonial oversight to rights-based recognition, a genuine transformation, but one marked throughout by unresolved tensions. The evolution from Convention No. 107 to Convention No. 169 should not be read as a straightforward story of progress. It reflects, rather, the Organization's enduring struggle to reconcile its dual identity: as a universal standard-setting body and as an institution deeply embedded in the political realities of its member states.

What this history reveals, above all, is the power of indigenous peoples themselves to shape international norms. The shift toward a rights-based framework was not an innovation conceived within the ILO's Geneva offices. It was the product of decades of indigenous activism, regional experimentation, intellectual criticism, and persistent pressure on international institutions. Convention No. 169 remains, today, the primary international legal reference for indigenous and tribal peoples' rights – a milestone that continues to inspire constitutional reforms, domestic jurisprudence, and new models of institutional cooperation.

The history of the ILO's engagement with indigenous peoples is, ultimately, a reminder that legal innovation alone is insufficient. Convention No. 169 transformed the language of international law. Yet whether that transformation has genuinely shifted the balance of power between states and indigenous peoples, or merely reframed the same asymmetries in new terms, remains the central and urgent challenge of international indigenous rights governance today.

Resources

Anaya, S. James. “Indigenous Rights Norms in Contemporary International Law.” Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law 8 (1991):

https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2172&context=faculty-articles

Larsen, Peter Bille, and Jérémie Gilbert. “Indigenous Rights and ILO Convention 169: Learning from the Past and Challenging the Future.” The International Journal of Human Rights 24, nos. 2–3 (2020):

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/13642987.2019.1677615?needAccess=true

Rens, Jef. “The Development of the Andean Programme and Its Future.” International Labour Review 88, no. 6 (1963): 547–563:

https://labordoc.ilo.org/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma992660133402676&context=L&vid=41ILO_INST:41ILO_V2&lang=en&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine

Rens, Jef. “The Andean Programme.” International Labour Review 84, no. 6 (1962): 423–461: 

https://researchrepository.ilo.org/esploro/outputs/journalArticle/The-Andean-programme/995264896402676/filesAndLinks?index=0

Van Cott, D.L., The Friendly Liquidation of the Past: The Politics of Diversity in Latin America, pp. 262-265, 271-273 (2000)

International Labour Organization: https://www.ilo.org/topics-and-sectors/indigenous-and-tribal-peoples#publications