A/HRC/4/32 page 5 7. The Special Rapporteur has received information from different parts of the world concerning the slowness and difficulties in implementing those reforms and the frequent inconsistency between legislation on indigenous people’s rights and sectoral legislation. This contradiction arises above all in connection with the right to natural resources, generating a great deal of uncertainty and tension, which often finds expression in persistent social conflict. In countries such as Cambodia, Chile, Mexico and the Philippines, practice shows that these conflicts are sometimes resolved in a manner contrary to indigenous people’s interests and rights. Nevertheless, experience also shows that the new legal standard has become an essential tool for promoting the rights of these people, especially through the judicial system. 8. National courts are beginning to play an increasingly active role in the defence of indigenous rights. In December 2006, following one of Botswana’s lengthiest and most expensive trials, the High Court ruled that the Basarwa, who had been evicted by the Government from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, had the right to return to their traditional territory. In Kenya, the High Court recognized the right of the Ilchamus to effective representation in Parliament (A/HRC/4/32/Add.3, para. 23). In South Africa, the Supreme Court found in 2003 that the Richtersvel community held customary tenure of traditional lands, including the rights to subsoil resources 9. In September 2006 a federal court in Australia ruled that the indigenous Noonger people were the traditional owners of an area covering the city of Perth and its surroundings and concluded that the community had maintained its culture and customs since the European colonization era. This judgement means that the aboriginal communities may claim rights to lands where indigenous customary title has not been extinguished by legislative or executive acts that transformed those lands into individual private property. 10. Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court ruled in August 2006 that the four persons responsible for the killing of 12 Yanomami Indians in 1993 were guilty of the crime of genocide, rather than common murder, a crime that carries a lesser penalty and would have allowed the guilty parties to go free. 11. In 2006 the Canadian Supreme Court acknowledged the right of members of the First Nations of New Brunswick (Mi’kmaq and Maliseet) to carry out non-commercial logging in forests classified as Crown Lands, on the basis of the aboriginal title and of rights derived from treaties signed with the British Crown. It is yet another case in which the courts have recognized indigenous people’s rights in disputes with the federal and provincial Governments, on the basis of constitutional provisions and past treaties. 12. Following the considerable advance represented by the ruling on the Awas Tingni community’s land rights in Nicaragua in 2001, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has ruled in some other cases in favour of the rights of indigenous communities on the American continent, including its judgements in the following cases: Plan de Sánchez Massacre (Guatemala), Yatama (Nicaragua), Yakie Axa and Sawhoyamaxa (Paraguay), Moiwana (Suriname) and the protective measures in favour of the Sarayaku community in Ecuador (A/HRC/4/32/Add.2, paras. 19-21). The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights plays an active role in these cases and has issued reports on the cases of the Western Shoshone people of the United States of America, and the Maya communities of Belize, among others.