A/HRC/28/57/Add.1 the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, regarding the liberty of individuals and bodies to establish and direct educational institutions. 84. Beyond the issue of the language of instruction, establishing a multicultural environment in schools is crucial. The Special Rapporteur visited a boarding school in Sa Pa which hosts students from six ethnic groups living in the district. The school emphasizes the importance of the preservation of cultural heritage, through, for example, traditional games in sports, traditional songs in music lessons and traditional dances and costumes. Small programmes on local literature, poems and stories, and/or local traditional knowledge, such as agricultural techniques, have also been introduced. The Special Rapporteur encourages further steps in that direction, including the development of adequate teaching materials. She stresses the importance of such measures in a context where students, including children at a young age, are placed in boarding schools and therefore removed from the cultural life of their families and communities. 3. Development and tourism policies (a) Development projects 85. The Government, as well as multiple actors in Vietnamese society, recognizes that conflicts are arising from the priority given to industrialization and development, and acknowledges the need to safeguard tangible and intangible cultural heritage. The detrimental impacts of development programmes on the cultural rights of ethnic minorities and local communities are of particular concern. 86. Also of particular concern to the Special Rapporteur, is the fate of communities whose ways of life and culture have been completely disrupted by development programmes. During and after her visit, she raised the case of Con Dau parish near Da Nang, where residents were subjected to forced evictions from land that they had traditionally tilled for years, to make way for the development of a private mega housing scheme.12 While thanking the Government for its response to a joint communication,13 the Special Rapporteur recommends that the cultural rights of the communities concerned be fully taken into consideration in the planning and implementation of all private and public development programmes. She is concerned about the many reported cases of forced evictions of communities and of the reported violence by the police against those resisting eviction. 87. More generally, land seizure and its impact on the livelihoods and cultural life of people are major issues. During the Special Rapporteur’s visit, discussions were under way about the new Land Law, adopted on 29 November 2013. According to the law, individual people and communities do not own land, but may be allocated or leased land for use. Article 16 gives the State the power to recover land in a number of cases, in particular for the purpose of socioeconomic development in the national or public interest. In such a case, land users shall be entitled to compensation, support and resettlement, as prescribed by law. 88. The Special Rapporteur is concerned, however, that people are only given 90 days’ notice (for agricultural land) or 180 days’ notice, prior to the recovery of the land, and that a preponderant role is attributed to people’s committees in the process. That cannot be considered proper consultation with the communities concerned. Given the allegedly high level of corruption amongst local officials, people have expressed fear that the system is 12 13 See A/HRC/27/72, p. 19, VNM 3/2014. Ibid. 17