A/HRC/4/32/Add.2 page 18 62. The absence of legislation has not prevented indigenous communities from various regions invoking in practice their constitutionally established right to exercise their authority and what they consider their legal uses and customs and to do so more and more frequently, to resolve situations of a conflict of interest and to protect themselves from external aggression. In this context, there have been numerous conflicts of jurisdiction between indigenous and legal authorities, apparent abuses by both authorities, instances of their taking the law into their own hands and even the formation of self-defence groups which claim that their actions are protected by indigenous customary law. 63. The President of the Supreme Court told the Special Rapporteur of the need to harmonize these two justice systems and cited various examples in which courts tried cases that had already been tried and resolved in the indigenous justice system. Refusal to recognize these decisions based on customary law is a crucial aspect of the more general issue of the failure to develop legislation to implement innovative provisions of the Constitution. He also spoke of the need to establish a court specifically for indigenous issues, in addition to a network of justices of the peace and judges in indigenous law. Congress urgently needs to consider issuing regulations giving effect to the constitutional principle recognizing indigenous justice so that it may be harmonized with the ordinary system of justice. 64. DINAPIN has operated as part of the Office of the Ombudsman since 2000. Its mission is to monitor and uphold the rights of indigenous nationalities, peoples and organizations in Ecuador through the dissemination, promotion and defence of those rights. To carry out this task, DINAPIN has created a network of indigenous human and collective rights activists at the national level who, protected by the Ombudsman Act, defend and promote human and collective rights throughout Ecuador. The Office of the Ombudsman is also developing other initiatives within its mandate, such as providing court-appointed lawyers, proposing solutions to intracommunity conflicts or securing the release of indigenous prisoners. 65. The difficulty of legislating in the area of indigenous justice and determining its scope represents a significant gap in private contracts negotiated by community representatives in foreign languages, such as Spanish or English, relating to specialized legal issues in the financial or intellectual property domain that affect indigenous people and territories. I. Bilingual intercultural education 66. DINEIB, established in 1987, is legally responsible for education programmes for indigenous peoples and nationalities. It has the status of a national institution, although it lacks the necessary resources to perform all the tasks assigned to it. Bilingual intercultural education is provided in 2,802 schools in 16 provinces, to some 123,400 pupils of 14 nationalities. 67. Nevertheless, not all indigenous children have access to schooling. A 2003 study in Cotopaxi showed that 526 rural children did not go to school, as their homes were too far away. In State schools, the Government runs a school meals programme for indigenous children, but a study shows that more than 1.3 million children still do not receive breakfast and lunch regularly, the meals provided under the programme as an inducement to ensure their attendance at school.