65 120. Decree No. 16-96 of August 23, 1996, pertaining to the creation of the National Commission for the Demarcation of the Lands of the Indigenous Communities of the Atlantic Coast, established that “the State recognizes communal forms of property of the lands of the Communities of the Atlantic Coast”, and pointed out that “it is necessary to establish an appropriate administrative body to begin the process of demarcation of the traditional lands of the indigenous communities”. To this end, the decree entrusts that national commission, among other functions, with that of identifying the lands which the various indigenous communities have traditionally occupied, to conduct a geographical analysis process to determine the communal areas and those belonging to the State, to prepare a demarcation project and to seek funding for this project. 121. Law No. 14, published on January 13, 1986 in La Gaceta No. 8, Official Gazette of the Republic of Nicaragua, called “Amendment to the Agrarian Reform Law”, establishes in article 31 that: The State will provide the necessary lands for the Miskito, Sumo, Rama, and other ethnic communities of the Atlantic of Nicaragua, so as to improve their standard of living and contribute to the social and economic development of the [N]ation. 122. Based on the above, the Court believes that the existence of norms recognizing and protecting indigenous communal property in Nicaragua is evident. 123. Now then, it would seem that the procedure for titling of lands occupied by indigenous groups has not been clearly regulated in Nicaraguan legislation. According to the State, the legal framework to carry out the process of land titling for indigenous communities in the country is that set forth in Law No. 14, “Amendment to the Agrarian Reform Law”, and that process should take place through the Nicaraguan Agrarian Reform Institute (INRA). Law No. 14 establishes the procedures to guarantee property to land for all those who work productively and efficiently, in addition to determining that property may be declared “subject to” agrarian reform if it is abandoned, uncultivated, deficiently farmed, rented out or ceded under any other form, lands which are not directly farmed by their owners but rather by peasants through medieria, sharecropping, colonato, squatting, or other forms of peasant production, and lands which are being farmed by cooperatives or peasants organized under any other form of association. However, this Court considers that Law No. 14 does not establish a specific procedure for demarcation and titling of lands held by indigenous communities, taking into account their specific characteristics. 124. The rest of the body of evidence in the instant case also shows that the State does not have a specific procedure for indigenous land titling. Several of the witnesses and expert witnesses (Marco Antonio Centeno Caffarena, Galio Claudio Enrique Gurdián Gurdián, Brooklyn Rivera Bryan, Charles Rice Hale, Lottie Marie Cunningham de Aguirre, Roque de Jesús Roldán Ortega) who rendered testimony to the Court at the public hearing on the merits in the instant case (supra paras. 62 and 83), expressed that in Nicaragua there is a general lack of knowledge, an uncertainty as to what must be done and to whom should a request for demarcation and titling be submitted. 125. In addition, a March, 1998 document, “General diagnostic study on land tenure in the indigenous communities of the Atlantic Coast”, prepared by the Central American and Caribbean Research Council and supplied by the State in the present case (supra paras. 64, 65, 80 and 96), recognizes “[…]lack of legislation assigning