E/CN.4/2003/90 page 22 63. These issues stand out clearly in the ambitious Puebla Panama Plan (PPP) adopted by the Governments of Central America countries and Mexico in 2000, designed to modernize and integrate the region which shares a number of common features, including a high density of indigenous inhabitants and generally low levels of human development. The plan is designed to promote economic development through public and private investments, with international financing. A number of planned projects, which range from airport security to fibre optics networks, organized around eight distinct regional initiatives, directly involve indigenous peoples, such as highway construction, tourist promotion, natural resource management, the introduction of new crops and the setting up of maquila plants. Many indigenous and human rights organizations in the region have expressed their serious concern regarding the possible negative effects that a number of these projects, taken together, may have on indigenous human rights. Whereas the Inter-American Development Bank expects the PPP to take advantage of the human and ecological riches of the Mesoamerican region within a framework of sustainable development and respect for its ethnic and cultural diversity, the Central American Indigenous Council addressed a letter to the region’s Presidents stating: “2. The indigenous peoples express to you our concerns about the absence and lack of enforcement of judicial and economic mechanisms to protect the territorial security of our peoples; and we state the need for the inclusion in Plan Puebla Panama of a regional strategy that guarantees that territorial security. “… 5. We exhort the Nation States to create national judicial instruments to ratify and enforce the international instruments that protect indigenous peoples’ rights. We urge the Presidents to frame the strategic actions of the Plan Puebla Panama in the promotion, guarantee and development of the indigenous peoples’ fundamental rights, contemplated in the aforementioned instruments. 6. It is imperative to create an indigenous component of the Plan Puebla Panama to facilitate the exercise of a transversal approach among the different components of the general strategy and to strengthen indigenous peoples’ initiatives oriented to promote development with identity, equity and social justice.”71 64. Some indigenous organizations are more critical of the Plan. Several human rights organizations in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico, are concerned that the implementation of the Plan in their region will destroy their traditional environment and natural resources, impact negatively on their subsistence agricultural activities and social organization and force them to accept low-paying jobs in export-oriented assembly plants (maquiladoras). They specifically oppose the construction of a highway that would cross their traditional habitat without bringing them any benefits, and complain that their concerns have not been addressed by the agencies involved in promoting the PPP.72 65. The Special Rapporteur wishes to transmit to the Commission on Human Rights his concern that notwithstanding statements to the contrary by the highest authorities and the various national and international agencies involved in promoting the Puebla Panama Plan as a