CULTURAL RIGHTS indigenous children in a specific recommendation.12 The CESCR has provided some guidance in its Concluding Observations and elsewhere as to how the Covenant applies to indigenous peoples and minorities. It has recognized the importance of cultural rights for individual and collective identity, the relationship between cultural rights and a variety of other rights, such as land and resource rights, and appears to support the proposition that Article 15 can also protect collective rights in addition to individual rights.13 The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACtHR) and the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights (IACHR) have paid a great deal of attention to the cultural rights of minorities and indigenous peoples, and especially the interdependency of cultural rights and territorial rights. The Court has also assessed cultural rights in relation to definitions of family, territorial rights and burial customs, and has generally highlighted the importance of taking into account the customs of the indigenous peoples of the Americas for purposes of application of the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR), including for the purposes of reparations.14 Turning to the European system, under the ECHR, in G and E v. Norway, a case involving indigenous peoples (Sami), the European Commission recognized that under Article 8 (which protects the right to respect for family and private life), ‘a minority group … [is] in principle, entitled to claim the right to respect for the particular lifestyle it may lead …’.15 The Advisory Committee on the FCNM has found that land rights are of ‘central relevance to the protection of the culture and identity’ of indigenous peoples,16 and traditional economic and social activities require protection as does the environmental quality of indigenous territories in relation to cultural rights.17 With regard to minorities, it has repeatedly stressed cultural rights and their relationship to other rights such as education and language, and related participation rights.18 Additional standards are being developed that further elaborate cultural rights, particularly in the case of indigenous peoples. Both the UN and the Organization of American States (OAS) are presently in the process of approving declarations on the rights of indigenous peoples that include numerous guarantees for cultural rights. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights recently concluded a study on indigenous peoples in Africa, which placed much emphasis on cultural rights.19 Human rights standards aimed at the private sector, particularly transnational corporations (TNCs), include guarantees for the cultural rights of minorities and indigenous peoples.20 Obligations to respect these rights are incumbent on both the TNCs themselves, although this area of law is still developing, and upon states, which are required to exercise due diligence to ensure that TNCs respect rights and are held accountable for violations.21 International development agencies and international financial institutions have also recognized that cultural rights require protection in the projects they fund, 85