A/HRC/24/50 Governments to deprive indigenous peoples of access to justice for their lands.37 Where indigenous peoples have won land rights cases in courts, States must implement these decisions. 37. Despite the responsibility of businesses to respect international human rights law, indigenous peoples face difficulties in seeking reparations for human rights violations caused by business. Moreover, redress mechanisms for issues arising from development and private sector projects may not be into place, resulting in impunity for serious human rights abuses.38 38. Indigenous leaders and individuals have been subjected to various forms of abuse, including harassment, physical violence and extrajudicial executions, in instances where they have supported campaigns against commercial activities on indigenous territories.39 Furthermore, criminal processes in some instances are lodged against indigenous organizations seeking to defend their rights, and the media are used to characterize indigenous peoples as delinquents or even criminals. 2. Remedies 39. Some States have established specific mechanisms for the investigation of indigenous land rights, such as the Specific Claims Tribunal Act of Canada and the Finnmark Commission of Norway. 40. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has found that, in the case of violation of land rights, restitution is the ideal form of reparation.40 Where indigenous peoples have been deprived of lands and territories traditionally owned or otherwise inhabited or used without their free and informed consent, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has found that the State should take steps to return those lands and territories. Only when this is for factual reasons impossible should the right to restitution be substituted by the right to just, fair and prompt compensation, which should, as far as possible, take the form of lands and territories.41 C. Issues relating to the administration of criminal justice in relation to indigenous peoples 41. Available data indicates that indigenous peoples are often overrepresented in all contact with the criminal justice system: they are more likely to be victims of crimes,42 often committed by non-indigenous perpetrators; and they are more likely to have contact with the police and be charged with offences, convicted of offenses and receive harsher sentences.43 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 10 See, for example, E/C.19/2007/CRP.6. The Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises will present a report to the General Assembly in 2013 on the implementation of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in the context of business activities that have an impact on indigenous peoples. Asian Legal Resource Center, at the Human Rights Council panel discussion on access to justice. See Case of the Sawhoyamaxa Indigenous Community v. Paraguay, judgement of 29 March 2006. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, general recommendation No. 23, para. 5. For example, in the United States of America, Native Americans are more than twice as likely as members of the general population to be the victims of violent crime. (United States Department of Justice, “American Indians and Crime: a BJS Statistical Profile, 1992-2002” (2004)). See, for example, Office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada, “Spirit matters: aboriginal people and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act”, 2012.