A/49/415/Add.1 English Page 24 right to restoration of lands of which they were dispossessed several decades or even centuries ago. In other cases, demands may be for a special protected status that will avert further dispossession today. In yet other cases, where there is evidence of blatant discrimination in patterns of land access and use, demands may be rather for genuine equality of rights with dominant majorities ... "An important issue is the relationship between the land rights of minorities and equality of rights, including equal rights to the land. In some cases - perhaps most notably in Latin America - formal equality of rights has generated flagrant de facto inequalities. In other cases notably in southern Africa and the Israeli-occupied territories inequality of land rights has generated equally flagrant de facto inequalities. These are cases of blatant discrimination, the legacy of which now has to be addressed through affirmative action policies and programmes. Burning questions are those of land restitution and the extent to which future Governments should recognize the claims of the present-day landowners and occupiers who have benefited from racial discrimination in the past. In Eastern Europe different issues are raised by restitution. Evolving laws and policies, based on the long-standing claims of private landowners before the collectivization era, threaten to prejudice the land security of disadvantaged ethnic minorities with no prior claims to the land. "There can be no easy answer to these questions. In some cases, the most vulnerable minorities are in danger of extinction if their claims to special protection are not met. In others, stronger minorities are pursuing their land claims with increasing vigour, forcing the State to establish mechanisms to deal with them. The time has surely come to grapple with these issues more effectively at the international level, to assist in arbitration on a complex array of claims. "In future standard-setting or advocacy work on minorities, the international community faces a dilemma. There is a growing body of protection for the land and related resource rights of indigenous and tribal peoples, but no reference to land concerns in international law relating to minorities. Overall, the rights of indigenous or tribal peoples and other minorities are treated separately in international law, even though the basic distinctions between these groups are sometimes questioned by international legal experts. If the concept of minorities is not actually defined in current international law, and ’self-identification’ is to be an important criterion in determining which peoples are to be considered as ’indigenous’ or ’tribal’, then the implications are that minorities will increasingly seek to define themselves as indigenous or tribal whenever they have major grievances concerning land rights ... "As the report has aimed to demonstrate, a large number of minorities throughout the world could claim the status of indigenous and tribal peoples, and could formulate their land claims accordingly. But other minorities are clearly not indigenous, for example the descendants of immigrant or indentured workers. Many of these have traditionally depended /...