A/HRC/45/22 legal aid through grants, in an effort to ensure access to justice and remedy for communities who have suffered from land rights violations. 35. In February 2020, the country office also joined an assessment mission to Kratie and Stung Treng provinces, Cambodia, to evaluate the difficulties faced by indigenous communities living in government-claimed environmentally protected areas. Those communities have been unable to register their traditional land as communal land, because the Ministry of Environment declined to change the legal land status. The Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction and OHCHR are exploring options for assisting the Ministry of Environment in ensuring that the right to land of indigenous peoples is protected. 36. During the period under review, the OHCHR office in Colombia contributed to advancing 23 legal processes, which resulted in returning almost 5 million hectares to indigenous communities, including to the Hitnu people of Arauca, the Jiw people of the Barrancón and La Fuga territories in the Guaviare region and the Arhuaco people of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The country office also continues to support 50 ongoing legal processes related to 130 requests for protection from 14 indigenous groups in Putumayo, 13 of which are facing risks of physical and cultural extermination. The country office further provided technical assistance to the Land Restitution Unit and the National Land Agency to strengthen their protection mechanisms in accordance with international standards. In coordination with the Office of the Ombudsman of Colombia, the country office established an inter-institutional commission aimed at developing biocultural indicators to measure the risk to indigenous peoples of physical and cultural extermination. 37. In the framework of the Maya programme, the OHCHR office in Guatemala provided assistance and advice on international standards for the strategic litigation of the Chuarrancho case. In May 2019, the Constitutional Court ruled in favour of the Chuarrancho indigenous community for the restitution of their lands and, in a separate decision, ordered the restitution of lands and territories to the Ajawab’’ indigenous authorities of San Pedro Jocopilas-Quiché. 38. In 2017, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights found that Kenya had breached the Ogiek’s rights after repeated evictions from their lands in the Mau forest. In September 2019, an expert meeting was held to formulate solutions that would become the recommendations of the task force on issues raised in the Court decision. OHCHR provided financial and technical assistance, including for the development of the programme of work of the expert meeting, and facilitated the session on the constitutional thresholds for public forests and community forests. During the reporting period, the task force appointed by the Government of Kenya, mandated to implement the Court decision, acknowledged the role played by, and expressed its thanks for, the assistance of OHCHR in the process. 39. The Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples also submitted expert testimony to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights as an amicus curiae in the examination of the reparation due to the Ogiek community following the Court’s ruling in 2017.8 40. In August 2019, OHCHR organized a regional workshop on the role of young people as agents of change in the promotion and protection of indigenous peoples’ land rights, the environment and climate change, which was held in Bangkok. Twenty-eight youth representatives from indigenous communities in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand participated. The workshop increased participants’ capacities to monitor the impact of the activities of transnational corporations and extractive industries on economic, social and cultural rights. 41. OHCHR representatives participated in an event in Hokkaido, Japan, in October 2019 organized by the Ainu Women’s Association with the support of Slow Food International and the International Fund for Agricultural Development, among others. The event took place in the homeland of the Ainu people and brought together 200 indigenous delegates representing peoples from 27 countries of the Asia and Pacific region. The role of indigenous 8 Available from www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IPeoples/SRIndigenousPeoples/ Pages/ExpertTestimony.aspx. 7