A/HRC/6/15 page 19 civil war. PRODERQUI has also set itself the goal of easing the workload of women in their day-to-day activities, so as to enable them to participate in political and decision-making processes, and of strengthening indigenous women’s organizations and micro-enterprises. 58. Institutional strengthening processes have made it possible for indigenous women’s organizations to become more closely involved in programme management. Thus, the Ngöbe Women’s Association (ASMUNG) has played a fundamental role in promoting health care and reproductive health services in more than 30 Ngöbe communities in Panama. The association’s high standing has played an important role in reaching women and girls from the communities involved, as well as their husbands and fathers. 59. Institutional strengthening of indigenous women’s organizations has also been a key factor in promoting respect for human rights and combating problems which particularly concern women, such as gender-based violence. In that context, UNIFEM has promoted capacity-building and institutional strengthening for women’s organizations in such countries as Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru, encouraging efforts to expose acts of violence against women and girls and to identify mechanisms to combat such violence, both through the official justice system and through traditional indigenous justice. IV. CONCLUSIONS 60. Although over the past 50 years extensive efforts and resources have been devoted to overcoming the poverty and marginalization from which most indigenous communities suffer, the economic, social and human development levels of these communities generally remain very low. Key to understanding the limited impact of development policies is that they have not attacked the structural causes underlying the marginalization of indigenous peoples, causes that are directly linked to the failure to recognize, protect and guarantee observance of their individual and collective human rights. 61. A rights-based approach identifies indigenous people as full holders of human rights and sets the realization of their rights as the primary objective of development. As documented in many best practices followed in different parts of the world, an endogenous and sustained development is possible when it is based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples and undertakes to ensure their observance. 62. Attested best practices in development based on the rights of indigenous peoples are to be found in social and political processes initiated by indigenous communities and organizations in exercising and defending their rights. These are empowerment processes which are predicated on the assumption by indigenous peoples of ownership of their rights and on strengthening the ability of these peoples to organize and demand the observance and exercise of their rights, and also their political participation. 63. The rights-based approach brings with it a system of principles which may be used in formulating, applying and evaluating constructive policies and agreements between Governments and indigenous peoples. With the recent adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, development stakeholders now have at their disposal a clearly formulated regulatory framework for development policies and actions targeted at them.