83 Cultural rights Fergus MacKay Culture manifests itself in many forms and is embedded in the daily practices and knowledge of minorities and indigenous peoples. It includes the duties and obligations that are necessary for social life to continue and is fundamental to the collective identity and the distinctiveness of the group. Because of this relationship between culture and collective and individual identity, social cohesion and daily life, cultural rights are particularly important guarantees for indigenous peoples and minorities. They cumulatively protect the survival and continued development of indigenous and minority collectivities. Indeed, acts and omissions detrimental to indigenous peoples’ ‘ethnic identity and against development of their traditions, their language, their economies, and their culture’ – have been deemed to violate human rights ‘essential to the right to life of peoples’.1 Standards As culture encompasses a wide range of beliefs, values and practices that are intrinsic to most aspects of life, the right to culture has a broad scope. Among others, subsistence rights, rights to lands and resources, burial rites and family rights have all been determined to fall under the right to culture. Additionally, cultural rights are interconnected with and are relevant to the implementation of a range of other rights. Implementation of the right to education, health and housing, among others, requires that services be culturally appropriate and take into account traditional practices and values.2 Both the HRC and the CESCR also have begun to examine the (highly important) interrelationship between cultural rights and the right to self-determination (Article 1 of the Covenants).3 Article 15(1) of the ICESCR guarantees the right of all persons to ‘take part in cultural life’ and to benefit from the ‘moral and material interests of any scientific, literary or artistic production’ authored by them, which raises the possibility of protection of traditional knowledge and intellectual and cultural heritage rights under the Covenant, as well as in domestic laws implementing the Covenant.4 Article 15(2) provides that states must take steps to achieve the full realization of the right to culture. Other international instruments, both binding and non-binding, also recognize the cultural rights of minorities and indigenous peoples. Article 27 of the ICCPR, for instance, protects persons belonging to minorities (and indigenous