E/CN.4/2003/90/Add.2 page 12 origin. The application of the law on the granting of supplementary titles may continue to result in dispossession, and hence in conflicts between landowners and communities, and between one community and another. 27. The machinery set up so far to implement the commitments enumerated in the Agreement on Identity and Rights, such as the Land Trust Fund and the programmes for the resettlement of displaced and returning groups, has proved inadequate to the task of modifying the existing situation, and, even to the extent that it has been used, has been unable to make up the accumulated backlog, deal with new demands for land, settle disputes and rectify inequalities in land distribution. New developments have worsened the situation in recent years: the establishment of protected areas or forest reserves, and the granting of mining and forestry rights. As a rule these measures exclude the indigenous groups who have settled in or near such areas from exploiting the resources, fail to take into account their impact on the needs of the communities, make no provision to address such impacts and have been drawn up without consultation with those concerned. 28. Access to land for indigenous women is problematic. Despite the provisions of the Peace Agreements, widowed or separated women or those who have married for a second time do not succeed in gaining title to their property (communal or personal), recovering family property or acquiring new land under cooperative or other programmes. Such problems are growing in complexity, but there is no land court or other formal machinery for settling land disputes, which are increasingly heard in the criminal courts in the form of proceedings for dispossession or illegal seizure. This also leads to serious tension and conflicts between those responsible for law enforcement (the courts, the public prosecutors and the police) and the leaders of the indigenous peoples, who have traditionally played a role in regulating access to land and settling land disputes. 29. Labour relations in the rural areas have also failed to undergo substantial changes compared with the situation before the domestic armed conflict. Practices persist whereby indigenous workers are recruited and moved away to work in traditional and new plantations, as well as other ways of recruiting temporary labour at wages falling below the legal minima, without social security coverage or respect for basic rules relating to pay, security of employment or working conditions. This situation affects indigenous women and children especially severely. 30. To some extent, this lack of security in the labour sphere, particularly for women, is repeated in the new workplaces set up under the legislation on export processing zones. Representatives of groups of indigenous women informed the Special Rapporteur of the poor working conditions in such plants and said that indigenous women are victims of racist attitudes and discriminatory practices on the part of the employers or their representatives. One such practice involves a ban on wearing traditional dress in the workplace. 31. The unfair distribution of land, restrictions on access to other natural resources, the lack of jobs and the insecure working conditions combine to create a general lack of food security which particularly affects indigenous children. Some of those interviewed informed the Special Rapporteur of situations that could be described as starvation.