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Pleadings of the Commission
207. The Commission asked the Court to order the State to implement the
following measures, by mutual agreement with the Yakye Axa Community:
a) to give the Yakye Axa Community a title deed, free of cost, to the land
they claim as their traditional habitat or ancestral territory. Said land must
be equipped with the basic services as well as education and public health
services to enable the Community to develop a decent life in accordance with
its own cultural rules;
b) to protect the land claimed by the Community to ensure that its natural
resources, and especially its forests, are not destroyed, and that their
traditional subsistence activities are not affected;
c) to adopt domestic legal provisions to ensure the rights recognized by
Paraguayan legislation for the indigenous peoples.
The State must,
especially, establish an effective recourse for the indigenous peoples of
Paraguay to have access to their traditional habitat, in accordance with the
rights recognized for them by domestic legislation, and
d) to carry out, by means of a symbolic act previously agreed upon with the
alleged victims and their representatives, a public acknowledgment of its
international responsibility for human rights violations against the Yakye Axa
Community and its members.
Pleadings of the representatives
208. The representatives endorsed in totum the claims regarding reparations made
by the Commission in its application, and pointed out that:
a) the State must give the Yakye Axa Community its ancestral land and its
own territory and habitat, which will allow its members to have access to
decent living conditions and to maintain and pass on to future generations an
identity, a culture, and a manner of life. This will redress the long years of
waiting and suffering by the members of the Community since the time when
they and their leaders decided to return to their land;
b) return of the ancestral land must include granting the Community the
appropriate title deed to guarantee their right to communal ownership of that
land, with the minimum area required to ensure preservation and
development of their manner of life. Respecting the will of the members of
the Community, the minimum area would be the 18,189 hectares that
constitute the territory of Yakye Axa, known today as “Estancia Loma Verde”;
c) the land claimed and its natural resources must be protected until the land
is effectively turned over to the Community;
d) the State must establish a fund for payment of the ancestral lands of the
Community, based on the average market value of the land in the area
claimed, based on the minimum area claimed;
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