A/HRC/11/11 page 6 12. The current political and social conflict in Bolivia can be explained by geodemographic differences: although political power is wielded from the highlands, economic power in recent decades has shifted to the lowlands. The department of Santa Cruz has taken the lead in advocating departmental autonomy, which includes a demand for control of the area’s natural resources (land, water, forests, hydrocarbon reserves), management of which is crucial to the central Government in pursuing its programme of social reform. In order to further its demand for autonomy, the Santa Cruz ruling class has symbolically identified itself as the “camba nation” by way of challenging the power of the highland Kolla. IV. LEGAL AND INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ RIGHTS A. International legal framework 13. Bolivia has ratified the core United Nations human rights treaties and those of the Organization of American States (OAS), as well as the ILO Convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries (No. 169). 14. On 7 November 2007, Congress adopted Act No. 3760, elevating to the rank of domestic law the 46 articles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted by the General Assembly at its sixty-first session. This step demonstrates Bolivia’s commitment to the promotion and protection of indigenous rights, despite the fact that the practical implications of the Declaration have not yet been determined, in particular as concerns the reform of sectoral legislation and judicial practice. B. New Constitution and programme of legislative reform 15. Following several years of debate, a new Constituent Assembly was convened in 2006, with many indigenous members among the participants. The deliberations of the various Assembly committees in the city of Sucre took place in a context of acute social conflict. The new constitutional draft was given general approval on 24 November 2007 in the absence of most members of the opposition and in the midst of major unrest that required moving the Assembly’s headquarters to the outskirts of Sucre. The text was subsequently given detailed approval in Oruro on 10 December 2007. At the time of publication of the present report, some sectors of the opposition were still questioning the legitimacy of the Assembly and the new constitutional text. 16. The draft new Constitution, which will be subject to a referendum, incorporates broad recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights as part of a new plurinational and intercultural State model that will affect the nature and organization of all State powers and institutions. The draft incorporates the principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, including “the right [of indigenous peoples] to self-determination within the context of State unity, which consists of their rights to autonomy, self-government, the maintenance of their culture, recognition of their institutions and consolidation of their territorial entities” (art. 2). 17. Based on these principles, the draft Constitution includes a section on the rights of the “indigenous, native, peasant nations and peoples”, including innovative formulas for the recognition of their rights to autonomy and jurisdiction; rights in respect of lands, territories and