E/CN.4/2003/90/Add.2 page 8 women experience the lowest levels of economic and social well-being.5 Rural poverty among indigenous people has worsened in recent years as a result of the fall in world coffee prices, one of the traditional export products most widely grown by indigenous peasants. Indigenous people and poverty in Guatemala • Almost 40 per cent of indigenous people live in extreme poverty and about 80 per cent are poor, according to the National Survey of Living Conditions, 2000. • Poverty is concentrated in the south-west6 of the country, where almost 30 per cent of the total number of poor households are to be found. Thirty-three per cent of the country’s indigenous population is concentrated in the south-west. There is a high incidence of poverty in the north (Alta and Baja Verapaz) - 77 per cent of households are poor. The level is also high in the north-west7 - nearly 75 per cent of households are poor. Seventy-five per cent of households in the north and north-west regions are indigenous. • Thirty per cent of the indigenous population aged between 15 and 24 is illiterate. • In some communities, illiteracy among women is as high as 90 per cent. • Indigenous boys in the countryside complete a little over two years’ schooling on average, girls a little over one year. • Sixty-five per cent of the indigenous population has no access to a water supply network, over 80 per cent are not connected to sewerage systems and half are not connected to the electricity grid. Source: MINUGUA, The indigenous peoples of Guatemala: Overcoming discrimination in the framework of the Peace Agreements, September 2001. 12. Although the Agreement on Identity and Rights lays down specific objectives and targets that the Government is committed to attain, and although President Alfonso Portillo has undertaken to give them the status of official policy, the evidence shows that the Agreement has not been fulfilled and that there are serious delays in its implementation in comparison with the original timetable agreed by the signatories, which has had to be revised because of these very delays. 13. MINUGUA has stresssed at various times that the Government’s commitments regarding the indigenous peoples are those recording the greatest delays. Most of the actions envisaged to overcome discrimination are pending implementation.8 As various observers have noted, this suggests that the change proposed in the Peace Agreements has not been addressed and that the exclusive and monocultural model persists.9 The experience of the Special Rapporteur during his visit to Guatemala confirms this.