E/CN.4/2002/97 page 22 Commission on indigenous issues in Africa.28 In this connection, the particularly sensitive situation of indigenous girls is of paramount importance, inasmuch as they are often the most vulnerable victims of discrimination, exclusion and marginalization. The literature on the subject is still incomplete and fragmentary; consequently, the Special Rapporteur intends to give this topic his particular attention in subsequent reports to the Commission. 4. Social organization, local government, customary law 72. Cultural identities are sustained not only by a discrete list of “elements” that every member of a cultural group “carries along” as he/she goes through life. In fact, these elements may vary from individual to individual and they may, and frequently do, change over time. So it is not the contents of a culture which defines any group’s identity. It is rather in the field of social organization that identities are wrought and sustained. To the extent that a system of social relations defines the identity of each individual member and his/her link to the group as a whole, the social institutions and relationships characteristic of a given community are the necessary frame of reference needed for any culture to thrive. Indigenous communities know this well, because when they claim the right to maintain their social organization in the face of pressure from the wider society, they are actually appealing for the preservation of their culture. 73. Too often the larger society has taken the stance that indigenous social institutions are contrary to the national interest or, worse, are morally reprehensible. This position was taken for a long time by the dominant institutions in colonial empires. The question is frequently debated whether adherence to indigenous communal institutions may lead under certain circumstances to the violation of individual human rights (for example, the rights of women and girls). 74. Local community organization is often upheld by adherence to a generally accepted system of customs and mores, or customary law, which in numerous countries is not accorded any formal legal recognition and may in fact be considered as competing with the formal State legal system. Do community members who accept the norms of unwritten customary law stand in violation of a country’s legal system? Does the application of customary law violate nationwide legal norms? Yet what about situations in which the application of positive law entails a violation of community norms and customs? Might that not constitute a violation of human rights as well? 75. These issues are dealt with in different ways by individual States (and by different scholars) and the various solutions run from some form of accepted legal pluralism to the absolute rejection by the official legal system of any kind of indigenous customary law, with a number of possibilities in between. Under what circumstances might the application of indigenous legal systems (customary law) threaten internationally accepted standards of individual human rights? And conversely, under what circumstances could the limitation or elimination of indigenous customary law violate the human rights of members of indigenous communities? These are complex issues, on which there is much debate and little agreement and which need to be addressed objectively and without bias, a task on which the Special Rapporteur intends to report to the Commission in the future. 76. Since time immemorial, local communities have evolved some form of local government within the structure of a wider polity into which they have been integrated as a result of historical