E/CN.4/2003/90/Add.2 page 10 19. The Peace Agreements contain an undertaking to combat these inequalities, and some progress has been made. The number of justices of the peace in the indigenous areas has been increased, and a Commission on Indigenous Affairs has been formed within the Supreme Court. Other bodies set up include the Guatemalan Fund for Indigenous Development and the Office for the Defence of Indigenous Women, the latter described by the United Nations General Assembly as a positive step towards the protection of indigenous women.12 A commission has been set up to grant official status to the indigenous languages, on the basis of the work which has been carried out by the Academy of Mayan Languages of Guatemala. A joint commission has also been created to oversee the conservation and administration of Mayan sacred places, and a law on sacred sites has been adopted. More recently a Presidential Commission to Combat Discrimination and Racism against the Indigenous Peoples in Guatemala was established.13 20. Despite the proliferation of commissions, committees and ombudsmen, progress in dismantling ethnic and racial discrimination at the institutional level has been slow. Underlying this situation is the structural discrimination against the indigenous peoples which is founded on the historical mechanisms already referred to, by means of which the indigenous peoples were excluded from access to the economic, political and institutional resources they needed in order to live on an equal footing with the remainder of the population. As long as there is no modification of the very foundation of the concentration and appropriation of the principal economic, political and symbolic resources of the country by the governing elites, which have succeeded in systematically excluding the indigenous people from nation-building, the latter will be unable to play a role as free and equal citizens. The Agreement on Identity and Rights points to a modification of this structure as the means of guaranteeing peace and human rights in a framework of democracy, but, as MINUGUA has underlined, this path is strewn with pitfalls and the goal is not yet in sight. 21. Some of the priority areas examined by the Special Rapporteur during his visit to Guatemala are described below. III. PRIORITY ISSUES IN RELATION TO THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES The land issue 22. Agricultural resources are distributed very unequally in Guatemala, with cultivable land highly concentrated in a few estates. Ninety-four per cent of small farms (microfincas and fincas subfamiliares) occupy 18.6 per cent of the land, while 1.5 per cent of the large farms (those covering more than one caballería, or roughly 45.7 hectares) account for 62.5 per cent of the total. This reinforces the socio-economic polarization of Guatemalan society.14 According to another source, 96 per cent of producers farm 20 per cent of agricultural land, while 4 per cent of producers farm the remaining 80 per cent.15 23. More recent information indicates that during the more than three decades of armed conflict, the fragmentation of peasant plots into minifundios increased, leading to growing conflict, largely due to the displacement and resettlement of the indigenous population and the