70 243. As happens with the issue of the public works carried out within the ancestral territory, the fact that the indigenous communities of Fiscal Lots 14 and 55 lacked a territorial property title that was formally recognized by the authorities heightens the State’s international responsibility, because, as established by the jurisprudence of the system, the safeguards of the right to property under the interAmerican human rights instruments can be fully enforced by indigenous and tribal peoples in relation to territories that belong to them, but which have not yet been formally titled, demarcated or delimited by the State; and in fact, in the IACHR’s view States are under the special obligation of protecting untitled indigenous territories from any act which can affect or diminish the existence, value, use or enjoyment of the property, including the natural resources, that is present therein. 244. Consequently, the IACHR considers that in failing to adopt effective actions to control the illegal deforestation of the indigenous territory, the State of Argentina incurred international responsibility for violation of Article 21 of the American Convention. F. Actions tending to undermine the Lhaka Honhat association, and their rights to participation and of petition before the inter-American system 245. The petitioners assert that the State, through the Provincial Government of Salta, has carried out actions aimed at weakening the Lhaka Honhat Association, which is the form of organization freely chosen by the indigenous communities of Lots 14 and 55 to pursue their territorial claim. They argue that these actions took place when the Provincial Government promoted the disaffiliation of the indigenous communities that form part of the Association, and spurred division among their members. 246. Article 23.1.a. of the Convention establishes the right of every citizen to “take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives”. Even though the mechanisms of representative democracy are the manifestation par excellence of this right, the IACHR considers its scope to be much broader, encompassing other forms of participation through which persons take part, in a direct manner, in the administration of public affairs in their States. The American Convention thus adopts a broad notion of participation, which includes –for example- the diverse and profound manifestations of democratic participation, or also the establishment of forms of incidence upon the management of public affairs. 247. After examining the petitioners’ claims in light of these legal parameters, the IACHR considers that there is insufficient evidence in the case file to substantiate the claims of deliberate weakening of the Association by the authorities of the Provincial Government, promotion of the disaffiliation of its members, or of the division among the indigenous communities that form part of it. 248. The IACHR therefore concludes that in this process, it was not convincingly proved that there was a violation of the right established in Article 23.1 of the American Convention, in these specific terms alleged by the petitioners. VI. CONCLUSIONS 249. By virtue of the considerations of fact and of law established in the present report, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights concludes that: 1. The State of Argentina violated the right to property established in Article 21 of the American Convention on Human Rights, to the detriment of the indigenous communities that form part of the Lhaka Honhat Association, because they were not given effective title to their ancestral territory during the two decades since they presented their initial request for title in 1991. 2. The State of Argentina violated the right to property established in Article 21 of the American Convention on Human Rights, to the detriment of the indigenous communities that form part of the Lhaka Honhat Association, insofar as the State abstained from ensuring the right to obtain a single shared title to territory for all of the communities of the Fiscal Lots, a right that had been legally recognized in provincial decrees adopted between 1991 and 1995, thereby violating these indigenous