40 The expert witness is a resident of Ciudad Bilwi, in the Municipality of Puerto Cabezas, Northern Atlantic Autonomous Region. She is an attorney and notary public. She has 6 years’ experience working with indigenous communities on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, and has provided legal advice to indigenous communities in the various territories of the RAAN, both in the Municipality of Puerto Cabezas and in that of Waspam. She is a Miskito Indian, and her mother tongue is Miskito, which gives her some possibility of understanding the phenomena in that community. In the functioning of the judicial system in her country, indigenous communities face problems due to lack of harmony between substantive law and customary law as well as delay of justice. The exclusive use of the Spanish language in judicial proceedings poses another difficulty; there is a law on languages according to which the languages of indigenous peoples and ethnic communities are official in the autonomous regions, but the judges do not appoint translators nor interpreters for members of indigenous communities. The Constitution of Nicaragua protects property rights of indigenous communities. Articles 5, 89 and 180 of that Constitution recognize the right to property and also establish direct guarantees for such rights of indigenous peoples, with no need for subsequent specification. Regarding domestic remedies under Nicaraguan legislation, the only existing one is the amparo remedy. According to Law No. 49, the Law on Amparo, the indigenous communities have to file this remedy before the Appellate Court. This law states that the amparo remedy is to be filed before the Appellate Court which “hears the first proceedings up to the act of suspension, and the latter part up to the definitive judgment will be heard subsequently by the Supreme Court of Justice”. Indigenous peoples have resorted very little to the amparo remedy, because formerly the RAAN had no appellate court, which was only established in 1999. In 1982 the Appellate Court of the Department of Matagalpa was set up, far away from the Awas Tingni Community and other indigenous communities, and therefore the communities had to travel -because there was no other way- to Bilwi, then to the capital of Nicaragua, and finally to Matagalpa. It took them three days to file the remedy. The Awas Tingni Community filed an amparo remedy on September 12, 1995, and justice was delayed in this case. The law establishes a 5-day term for the Court where the remedy was filed to decide whether it accepts or rejects it, and it is then passed on to the Supreme Court of Justice of Nicaragua, which must decide on it in 45 days. The remedy filed by Awas Tingni was not decided within the 45 days, but rather almost two years afterward, on February 27, 1997, without responding to the applicant’s claims. A second amparo remedy was subsequently filed because the first one was not rejected on the basis of land titling, but rather for other reasons, such as not having consulted the Regional Council of the RAAN. With the request made in this second remedy, which was accepted, the concession to SOLCARSA was suspended. The Court accepted the remedy of unconstitutionality because the Council in full had not given its approval. Thus, the Nicaraguan Court declared that the unconstitutionality remedy was in order, and it annulled the 1997 concession. Once the concession was declared unconstitutional, the Regional Council met and ratified the concession.