E/CN.4/2002/97 page 16 existence, value, use or enjoyment of that property located in the geographic area in which members of the Mayagna (Sumo) Community of Awas Tingni live and carry out their activities”.17 46. Similar judgements are known to have been made by the courts in other States as well, so that indigenous land rights can, and indeed are, in some cases protected by favourable legal and court action. Still, these are exceptional cases, because generally indigenous communities do not have easy access to the judicial system and in a number of countries these remedies are not available to the indigenous at all. It therefore appears that in the future efforts must be made to improve access to the judicial system by indigenous communities and to reform the legal systems where indigenous peoples are denied access to legal recourse. 47. But even when laws are in principle available to the indigenous, these are not always implemented for their benefit. Numerous States report on recent legislative activity by which indigenous rights are seemingly protected, but indigenous organizations also report that their implementation leaves much to be desired. How to implement existing legislation effectively is as important for the rights of indigenous peoples as the adoption of such legislation itself. Moreover, not all legislation governing the ownership, use and access to land and other natural resources is favourable to the protection of indigenous rights. In some countries recent legislation undermines traditional communal or tribal holdings and opens the way to their dispossession by third parties or other private or corporate interests. 48. Erica-Irene Daes writes that “… aboriginal title is often subject to the illegitimate assumption of State power to extinguish such title, in contrast to the legal protection and rights that, in most countries, protect the land and property of non-indigenous citizens, other individuals and corporations … This single fact probably accounts for the overwhelming majority of human rights problems affecting indigenous peoples ...”. Moreover, “The expropriation of indigenous lands and resources for national development is a growing and severe problem. Development projects are frequently undertaken on indigenous lands and territories without indigenous consent or even consultation.”18 Violations of indigenous land rights within the framework of national development programmes are a major source of social tensions in a number of countries, and deserve closer scrutiny in the future.19 B. Homelands and territories 49. It is sometimes considered that the land issue is basically related to the availability of land for productive purposes (agriculture, forestry, herding, foraging) by individual members of indigenous communities. While this is certainly of the greatest importance because the lack of access to productive land sentences rural indigenous families to poverty and impels their members to emigrate in search of work, not always successfully, there are other factors involved as well.20 Indigenous communities maintain historical and spiritual links with their homelands, geographical territories in which society and culture thrive and which therefore constitute the social space in which a culture can reproduce itself from generation to generation. Too often this necessary spiritual link between indigenous communities and their homelands is misunderstood by non-indigenous persons and is frequently ignored in existing land-related legislation.