A/HRC/54/31/Add.1 61. As a good practice of Indigenous-led conservation initiatives, the Inuit in Greenland and Canada have proposed establishing a marine protected area, Pikialasorsuaq, covering the North Water Polynya, between Canada and Greenland. Inuit on both sides of the border will be involved in the management. A free travel zone will address issues related to Inuit hunting in the area and reconnect families on both sides of the borders. G. Access to justice in Greenland 62. The judicial system in Greenland is currently under Danish jurisdiction and faces challenges, including reaching geographically remote settlements, poor access to law and case law, and lack of qualified personnel and funding for digitalization, communications technology and personal data security. The international human rights framework on Indigenous Peoples, notably the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169), and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, are generally not invoked and therefore not applied in courts in Greenland. 63. Due process is often hindered by a lack of interpretation services in Greenlandic languages. Even if Greenlandic is the official language of Greenland, in its courts, Danish is often the language of the judges and legal and technical documents. Under the Administration of Justice Act for Greenland, only some legal documents are required to be translated into a language understood by the parties to a case. As most of the legal documents are in Danish, defendants who speak Greenlandic as their first language face obstacles in adequately presenting their cases in court. Additional challenges arise when interpretation is needed into or from East and North Greenlandic. Even if the courts are training interpreters in those languages, the number of them is still inadequate to guarantee defendants due process. 64. Only a few Inuit persons have achieved high-ranking positions in the legal system of Greenland. Notwithstanding the creation of a law programme at the University of Greenland and two years of legal training for lay judges, the judicial system of Greenland still struggles to find trained Inuit judges and public defenders. Such a lacuna harms the coherency of legal decisions, the length of the judicial process and equal access to justice. In some cases, the right of the defendant to a fair trial is not guaranteed when represented by a public defender who lacks legal training, while legally trained prosecutors or policepersons are their counterparts. This asymmetry persists regardless of some measures introduced under the Administration of Justice Act for Greenland. The Special Rapporteur recognizes the efforts of the Greenland Police Academy to recruit Inuit persons; however, the gap is still in place and more culturally appropriate measures are needed. 65. In the case of defendants with a mental health condition, courts in Greenland encounter challenges due to the delays associated with mental health examinations in the health-care system and inappropriate health-care facilities. In most cases, defendants are sent to a hospital in Denmark for treatment. In detention facilities in Greenland, there is a shortage of trained health-care staff, psychologists and psychiatrists, in particular who speak Greenlandic.23 Inmates with psychiatric needs may be referred to closed forensic psychiatric wards in Denmark due to the lack of such wards in Greenland. 66. The Special Rapporteur welcomes the fact that the criminal justice system of Greenland is founded on the principle of reintegration rather than that of punishment, with a system of six “open” prisons that allow inmates to conduct daytime activities outside the facilities. However, due to a lack of educational, working and recreational opportunities and lengthy processing times, some of the inmates live in closed conditions in institutions that are not built to accommodate persons 24 hours a day. The Special Rapporteur visited the new prison in Nuuk, which was built in 2019 to accommodate high-security inmates. That facility seeks to address the problem of Inuit inmates serving long sentences in Danish prisons, far from their families and communities. 67. The Special Rapporteur was informed of the high rates of incarceration and recidivism and the lengthy procedures for criminal cases in Greenland compared with Denmark. Even if the Criminal Code of Greenland does not contemplate a life sentence among the 23 12 See https://uk.uni.gl/media/4180619/retfaerd_1_2018_art1.pdf (in Danish). GE.23-13414