E/CN.4/2004/80 page 21 Anglo-Australian legal system. These projects have contributed to the decline in the crime rate and level of violence, especially juvenile crime, and to a change in social patterns and perceptions about the justice system. 79. The Agreement on Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 1995 in Guatemala, which is part of the Peace Agreements of 1996, established the need for a new national justice system adapted to the model of a pluricultural State, which includes three institutional mechanisms: (a) ordinary justice; (b) indigenous law as a system of norms, procedures and local authorities for the social regulation and solution of conflicts within indigenous communities; and (c) alternative conflict resolution mechanisms (ACRM). A system of Ethnic Defenders in indigenous areas, staffed by indigenous language-speaking lawyers, was set up in 2001, hoping to improve the access by indigenous people to the justice system. However, this model, as pointed out by the Special Rapporteur in his country report on Guatemala (E/CN.4/2003/90/Add.2), has not yet succeeded in providing an answer to the multiple justice issues facing indigenous peoples. 80. These are positive examples of how customary indigenous rights can coexist with the national legal systems. Indigenous communities in the cases described above have some autonomy to operate their own judicial laws, systems and institutions. 81. In Colombia, indigenous peoples have the constitutional right to exercise their own justice in their territorial space and to apply their own norms and procedures through their own authorities, their only limitation being the respect for “fundamental minimums” as set out by the Constitutional Court. Consequently, indigenous people cannot be dealt with in the ordinary justice system, which is seen as being culturally different from the indigenous environment. The new Penal Code recognizes the right of indigenous people to be judged by their peers.36 82. Many of the injustices of which indigenous peoples are the victims and most of the grievances which they have aired over the years at the national and international levels are not sufficiently well addressed by recourse to constitutionally established ordinary courts. They also require other institutional resources, such as special legislation, political negotiations and political will, alternative conflict resolution mechanisms, spiritual commitment, and lengthy and participatory healing processes. The setting-up in some countries of post-conflict truth commissions (as in Chile, Guatemala, Peru and South Africa) have been a step in the right direction, but if their recommendations are not acted upon, their consequences will be negligible. Above all, they will require extensive changes in public policy objectives designed to alter the traditional unequal, and often discriminatory, relationship between States and indigenous peoples and that will fully include the participation of indigenous peoples in decision-making processes. But the justice system needs to play a crucial role in this historical transformation. The justice system will have to change from being an instrument for the control of indigenous people by the State to becoming a tool for the protection and promotion of the rights of indigenous peoples. As the Special Rapporteur has pointed out in the preceding sections of this report, at the present time the picture is ambiguous. He invites member States to take an increasingly active role in reshaping their indigenous justice systems in order to respond fairly and generously to the historical challenge that they have been presented with.