88 CULTURAL RIGHTS equally important to be proactive in articulating models or indicators of culturally appropriate development and by insisting that external projects are sensitive to these models and that development agencies also support indigenous peoples’ and minorities’ own self-development initiatives. At the international level, as part of economic, social and cultural rights in general, cultural rights, as a separate category of rights, are somewhat neglected. There is a need for cases and reports that highlight the right to culture as a standalone right, as well as the relationship between cultural rights and other rights: education, food and housing, for instance. Interlinkages between the right to culture and non-human rights instruments are also important to stress. The Convention on Biological Diversity offers such an opportunity insofar as it obligates state parties to address rights to traditional knowledge (Art. 8j) and to promote and protect customary use of biological resources in accordance with traditional practices (Art. 10c). Case study 1 – Nibutani dam At the domestic level, recognition of cultural rights is largely dependent on recognition as an indigenous people or a minority, and some governments persist in unjustifiably denying such recognition. Until 1997 this was the case in Japan where the government refused to recognize the existence of indigenous peoples and defined the Ainu people as a minority entitled only to individual rights under the Constitution. The Ainu had long challenged this denial of their identity and a series of assimilationist laws and policies, including bans on their traditional lifestyle and use of language. They established a number of organizations, the Ainu Association of Hokaido (AAH) being the largest, to protect their cultural identity and rights and drafted a model law to show how their rights should be protected. One of the activities of the AAH was supporting Ainu who had attempted to challenge expropriation of their lands in the courts for construction of the Nibutani dam. Although not successful on all counts, they succeeded in obtaining judicial recognition of the Ainu as an indigenous people with attendant collective cultural rights.37 In reaching its decision, the court made reference to ILO Convention No. 169 and Article 27 of the ICCPR, and concluded that when the state seeks to implement projects such as the Nibutani dam, which may ‘produce effects on the culture of indigenous minority groups, the government has a special duty to give adequate consideration to such cultures with a view to avoiding unjust encroachment on their rights’.38 As a consequence of the court’s decision and earlier Ainu efforts promoting a draft law, the Japanese parliament adopted the Act Regarding the Promotion of Ainu Culture and the Dissemination and Education of