Spain is about to take the world into uncharted legal territory. Later this month, a resolution is going before Parliament that, if passed as expected, will give a set of rights to chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans. These great apes will then be regarded in Spanish law as ”legal persons”.
It will be of historic significance, the first time that any civilisation has recognised the special status of another species and the need to protect it, not only from extinction, but also from individual abuse. Spain will be obliged to introduce new laws protecting the great apes, putting pressure on other European countries to follow suit, and will undertake to organise a forum of rich nations to fund the protection of the great apes in their natural habitat.
The resolution is based on the work of the Great Ape Project, which was founded in 1993 by philosophers Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri. It urges the goverment in Spain to take the necessary measures in international forums and organisations to protect great apes from maltreatment, slavery, torture, death and extinction.
The central idea of the project is that the great apes share more than just DNA with humans. There is an enormous amount of data collected by scientists, including Jane Goodall, Diane Fossey and Birute Galdikas, that the great apes are intelligent beings with strong emotions that often resemble our own.
Singer and Cavalieri have presented a radical vision that has on occasion been widely misinterpreted. This is not a call for human rights to be accorded to the great apes, they say, and it will not result in the release of captive great apes into the wild. It is rather a recognition of their undeniable similarity to humans and a rejection of the notion that these animals can be considered property, with no more legal significance than an item of furniture.
”There is no sound moral reason why possession of basic rights should be limited to members of a particular species,” says Singer.
Spain is, on the surface, an unlikely country to be taking such a radical step towards recognising the rights of animals — after all, bull fighting is still considered a sport. Some philosophers believe that a deadly attack on humans might have been one of the motivations behind its move to recognise the rights of apes. The Madrid bombings on March 11 2004, which killed 192 people and injured more than 2 000, forced a radical rethink within society.
”The Madrid bombing made many people think about the consequences of selfishly letting one’s compatriots act wrongly,” says philosopher Paula Casal, who is also executive director of the Great Ape Project. ”[Spain’s] new President, [Jose Luis Rodri-guez] Zapatero, counts on passionate support for all his radical political changes and determination to tackle even our oldest vices.”
While Spain is taking radical steps towards the recognition of the rights of animals, Britain seems to be retreating. The clampdown on protest against animal experiments and prime ministerial support for such experiments suggests a shift in public attitudes.
There is still plenty of opposition in Spain, mainly from the church, to giving animals rights. The archbishop of Pamplona, Fernando Sebastian, has been reported as ridiculing the project. It seems that the principal concern is how this would undermine the anthropocentric world view and call into question the special status of human beings.
Then there is the claim that rights cannot come without responsibilities. Casal dismisses this argument: ”We would never load responsibilities on to the shoulders of a small child, yet we grant them rights. The great apes solve complex problems, they form long-term relationships, grieve the death of friends and relatives and can learn hundreds of words in sign language.”
Singer is excited by the progress. ”The proposal before the Spanish Parliament will at long last extend the concept of basic rights beyond our own species. It will be a historic breakthrough, not only for great apes, but for all animals — and for the moral development of humankind.” — Â