A/HRC/15/14 parliamentary consensual mechanism, with the participation of civil society in the nomination process. 7. The Ethnic Relations Commission was functioning, and the members of the Women and Gender Equality and Rights of the Child commissions had recently elected their chairpersons and were expected to be fully operational by mid-July 2010. The Indigenous Peoples Commission should be fully operational before the end of the year. The delegation described the method of appointing the members of the Human Rights Commission and reiterated its conviction that the rights commissions provided opportunities to receive and address complaints of violations of human rights. 8. The delegation stated that Guyana had enacted a series of statutes that specifically promoted and protected human rights. These included the Trafficking in Persons Act of 2005; legislation to increase the age of consent from 12 to 16 years; the Amerindian Act of 2006; and four pieces of modern legislation dealing with children’s rights, including legislation providing for the establishment of the Child Care and Protection Agency, the Sexual Offences Bill (unanimously adopted on 22 April 2010) and the Persons with Disabilities Bill of 2009. Those progressive pieces of legislation had been enacted following extensive consultation with civil society, communities and special interest groups and had been subjected to additional review through the Parliamentary Select Committee process, a feature of the Guyanese lawmaking process for more than a decade and a half. 9. The delegation stated that in 2008, President Bharrat Jagdeo, in order to further strengthen and entrench this model of participatory democracy, had initiated the convening of National Stakeholders’ Forums, comprising approximately 100 organizations from civil society representing all parliamentary political parties, all religious bodies, the labour movement, the business community, women’s groups and Amerindian organizations, as well as the Guyana Human Rights Association and some citizen non-governmental organizations. During the reporting period, 13 such engagements had been held on diverse issues such as domestic and sexual violence, crime and security, the Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union, the food and fuel crises and relief for Haiti. 10. The delegation noted that Guyana was cognizant of the threats facing it as a consequence of climate change. While a response to climate change must be global, Guyana could contribute by offering solutions to the problem. To that end, Guyana had developed a Low-Carbon Development Strategy calling for the provision of resources to small and vulnerable countries to enable them to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change, and offered a sustainable development model, while contributing to the reduction in carbon emissions globally, in part through the preservation and sustainable use of forests. The delegation reiterated that the Strategy had been subjected to an extensive consultative process that had included more than 130 Amerindian communities. 11. The delegation stated that Guyana had made significant strides in relation to the development of its indigenous peoples, who represented some 9 per cent of its population. A Ministry of Amerindian Affairs had been established, and the Amerindian Act of 2006 provided for, inter alia, land claims, resource rights, traditional rights, the governance of communities and the establishment of a National Toshaos Council. Access to social services had been significantly improved, and more indigenous children were now in school than in any previous period in the country’s history. Over the past five years, the ownership of land by indigenous communities had increased from 6.5 per cent to approximately 14 per cent of Guyana’s land mass, with 134 communities now having legal title to the lands that they used and occupied. Those legal titles were grants of State lands that were “absolute and forever” and allowed for their indisputable control by communities. Addressing land claims was a continuous process. 4