E/CN.4/2005/18/Add.6 page 10 19. Above and beyond the situations described by the indigenous peoples in the Atlantic regions, the representatives of the peoples of Somoto region whom the Rapporteur also met complained to him of the violation of their land rights. The Litelpaneca indigenous people, for example, denounced the appropriation of their land with the complicity of the police and underlined that the administrative and judicial remedies they had used to recover their rights had proved ineffective. They called for the removal of the Los Ranchos and El Limón farms which had been established on their land by individuals belonging to the former Contra resistance with local connivance. These peoples considered that Nicaragua’s failure to ratify ILO Convention No. 169 on indigenous and tribal peoples constituted a further obstacle to meeting their claims to land. 20. Despite the existence of the Bilingual Intercultural Education Programme, the persons consulted by the Special Rapporteur emphasized that the funds needed had not been allocated, so that the educational and human resources required for the implementation of the programme were lacking. In addition, the dominant teaching model remains instruction in Spanish. The Regional Autonomous System of Education, devised by the Atlántico Norte and Atlántico Sur regional councils in accordance with the Constitution and legislation on education, culture and languages (see paragraph 11 above), has not yet been approved by Parliament. IV. ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION OF THE POLITICAL AND LEGAL STRATEGY AND THE INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK 21. By acknowledging its ethnic diversity and granting it the protection of the law and an institutional framework, Nicaragua has taken a major step towards multiculturalism and the management of ethnic and racial pluralism. Yet the legislation and the institutions, which lack the resources they need for implementation and operation, have not succeeded in making regional autonomy a viable reality which merits recognition by the local people. It seems that the autonomy granted to the Atlantic coast regions is not always favourably viewed by Nicaragua’s central authorities, some of which regard it as a burdensome legacy of Sandinist policy, sustaining the separatist aspirations of the coastal people or efforts to strengthen the English-speaking identity to the detriment of the dominant Hispanic culture. There is also the perception of Mestizo ethnocentrism on the part of the peoples of the Atlantic coast, which is said to account for the neglect of economic and social development in their region. 22. Despite the deep historical roots of racial discrimination, its pervasiveness in contemporary society and its clear daily manifestations, the Special Rapporteur considers that there is no clear recognition of this reality by the political authorities and the dominant classes. The failure to recognize the reality of racial discrimination and its pervasiveness throughout the society is therefore a major initial obstacle to efforts to confront this problem directly and objectively and find a lasting solution. 23. The Special Rapporteur was particularly struck by the lack of an intellectual and ethical strategy to combat racism and discrimination. Neither the structure nor the content of Nicaragua’s system of education has been subjected to deconstruction with a view to analysing the history of racism, its origin, its mechanisms, its process, its expressions and manifestations. History, for example, which is the workshop for the discriminatory and racist construction of identities, does not appear to have been revisited, either in its written form or in the way in which it is taught. The mirror of identity, reflected by the media, ensures that indigenous people and