Great ape personhood is a movement to create legal recognition of bonobos, common chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans (the non-human great apes) as bona fide persons.
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On February 28, 2007 the parliament of the Balearic Islands, an autonomous province of Spain, passed the world's first legislation that would effectively grant legal personhood rights to all great apes.[1] The act sent ripples out of the region and across Spain, producing public support for the rights of great apes. On June 25, 2008 a parliamentary committee set forth resolutions urging Spain to grant the primates the rights to life and liberty. If approved "it will ban harmful experiments on apes and make keeping them for circuses, television commercials or filming illegal under Spain's penal code." [2]
These precedents followed years of European legal efforts. In 1992, Switzerland amended its constitution to recognize animals as beings and not things.[3] However, in 1999 the Swiss constitution was completely rewritten. A decade later, Germany guaranteed rights to animals in a 2002 amendment to its constitution, becoming the first European Union member to do so.[3][4][5]
New Zealand granted basic rights to five great ape species in 1999. Their use is now forbidden in research, testing or teaching.[6]
Well-known advocates are primatologist Jane Goodall, appointed a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations to fight the bushmeat trade and end ape extinction;[7] Richard Dawkins, former Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University;[8] Peter Singer, professor of philosophy at Princeton University;[9] and attorney and former Harvard professor Steven Wise.[10]
Goodall's longitudinal studies revealed the social and family life of chimps to be very similar to that of human beings in some respects. She herself calls them individuals, and says they relate to her as an individual member of the clan. Laboratory studies of ape language ability began to reveal other human traits, as did genetics, and eventually three of the great apes were reclassified as hominids.
This, plus rising ape extinction and the animal rights movement has put pressure on nations to recognize apes as having limited rights and being legal "persons." In response, the United Kingdom introduced a ban on research using great apes, although testing on other primates has not been limited.[11]
Writer and lecturer, Thomas Rose, makes the argument that granting legal rights afforded to humans to non-humans is nothing new. He points out that in the majority of the world, "corporations are recognized as legal persons and are granted many of the same rights humans enjoy, the right to sue, to vote and to freedom of speech."[1] Dawn Prince-Hughes has written that great apes meet all the standards set out for personhood: "self-awareness; comprehension of past, present, and future; the ability to understand complex rules and their consequences on emotional levels; the ability to choose to risk those consequences, a capacity for empathy, and the ability to think abstractly."[12]
Gary Francione, while an animal rights advocate, criticizes the concept of granting personhood because the animal in question is human-like, and argues instead that sentience is the only characteristic a being requires to have basic rights. [13]
Depending on the precise wording of any proposed or adopted declaration, personhood for the Great Apes may raise questions concerning protections and obligations under national and international laws, such as:
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