E/CN.4/2005/18/Add.6 page 9 – Out of 5,398 primary schools in the country, only 200 are located in the two regions, and the illiteracy rate is 40 per cent against 23 per cent for the country as a whole; despite the existence of programmes of multilingual education incorporating local languages, very little use is made of these languages and instruction in Spanish predominates; – Health infrastructure is also inadequate, so much so that patients suffering from serious illnesses have to be transported by helicopter to hospitals in the Pacific region; – Basic equipment and services are also largely inadequate in these regions: provision of drinking water stands at only 16.2 per cent in the Atlántico Norte Autonomous Region and 24 per cent in the Atlántico Sur Autonomous Region, against 60-70 per cent in the Pacific regions; and while the Atlántico Sur Autonomous Region possesses at least 225.3 kilometres of tarred roads, the Atlántico Norte Autonomous Region has almost no roads of this type and is inaccessible from Managua. B. Concerns relating to protection of land rights and the implementation of a bilingual intercultural education programme 17. One of the major concerns of the population both in the North and in the South is protection of their communal land rights. Despite the adoption of law No. 445 relating to the communal property regime for the indigenous peoples and ethnic communities in the autonomous regions of Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast and the rivers Bocay, Coco, Indio and Maíz, the representatives of these groups emphasized that the lack of proper demarcation of communal land jeopardizes their land rights. The Intersectoral Commission responsible for demarcation and granting of titles is unable to perform its role for lack of financial and human resources. The frequent intrusions into their land by settlers who mostly come from the Pacific regions, the allocation of land to Contras and former fighters in the Sandinist revolution and the granting of forestry or mining licences to companies without local consultation or consent constitute serious infringements of these land rights. The case of the Awastingni community was cited in this regard: on 13 March 1996, the Government granted the Korean company Solcarsa 62,000 hectares of forest to exploit, without obtaining the agreement of the Sumu-Mayagna peoples who claimed ownership, and in breach of the regional autonomy law. The population groups then appealed to the domestic courts and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. On 31 August 2001, the Court ruled in favour of these groups, finding that the State of Nicaragua had violated the ownership rights of the people concerned, and called for the suspension of all exploitation of the area of the grant and the start of negotiations with the local people with the aim of reaching agreement on delimitation and recognition of their land titles. The land in dispute has not yet been delimited. A number of violent confrontations between settlers and indigenous people, leading to fatalities, have also taken place in the Atlántico Norte and Atlántico Sur autonomous regions.6 18. The representatives of the autonomous regions expressed regret that the presidential adviser on Atlantic coast affairs was not from the region, and emphasized the fact that coastal people were largely unrepresented in the central administration.