A/HRC/4/32/Add.2 page 7 7. The Special Rapporteur also met representatives from the United Nations, international cooperation agencies, the business sector, non-governmental and civil society organizations and academic centres. II. LEGAL AND INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK 8. Ecuador is a multi-ethnic and multicultural country of approximately 12 million inhabitants. Its territory is often divided into four large regions: the Pacific Coastal region, the Sierra (highland or Andean region), Amazonia (the most extensive region, yet containing barely 5 per cent of the population) and the Galápagos archipelago. 9. In ethnic terms, there are mestizo, Afro-Ecuadorian, white and indigenous populations, the latter comprising 14 nationalities, of which the Quechua are the majority. No specific figures are available for the total indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian population. Depending on the definition used, the census records the indigenous population at 6 per cent, whereas other sources put it at between 35 and 45 per cent of the total. In 9 of the country’s 22 provinces, indigenous people make up the majority or a significant minority of the population, while approximately 12 per cent live in the highly urbanized cantons of Quito and Guayaquil. 10. The 1998 Ecuadorian Constitution defines the State as a multicultural and multi-ethnic body (art. 1). It lays down a significant range of specific collective rights for indigenous peoples and nationalities (arts. 83 and 84), and establishes various political and administrative bodies pertaining to such rights. Indigenous rights cover such areas as cultural diversity, identity, territories, indigenous jurisdiction, official use of languages, health, education, economic issues, cultural heritage, indigenous women, and indigenous border peoples. 11. Various laws and executive decrees govern the realization and protection of some of these rights, such as the Criminal Code (1971), the Decentralization and Social Participation Act (1997), the Agrarian Development Act (1997), the National Human Rights Plan (1999), and the Regulations on Consultation and Participation in Oil Activities (2002). 12. Progress has been made on lands and territories. The emergence on the social and political scene of the indigenous movement meant that, from 2002, the State began to return ancestral territories amounting to approximately 4 million hectares to the peoples of the coastal and Amazon regions, and began to recognize indigenous communal lands in the highland regions as inalienable, imprescriptible and not subject to seizure. The National Institute for Agrarian Development (INDA) is involved in allocating these lands, which are not put on the free land market, and form the material basis of support for indigenous peoples. Titling of collectively owned indigenous lands has permitted negotiations on the management of their natural resources. 13. Indigenous land ownership is not suitably covered by legislation. This therefore frustrates efforts by communities and peoples to exercise their autonomy and to participate fully in the management of natural resources in their territories. Various specialists believe that territorial reorganization is needed if this pending issue is to be resolved, while respecting the collective human rights of the indigenous peoples.