Should great apes—chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, gorillas and gibbons—have legal rights?
They should have rights, according to the Spanish Parliament’s environmental committee, which recently approved a resolution urging the country to embrace the ideals of the Great Ape Project—an organization that argues that "non-human hominids" should enjoy the right to life, freedom and not to be tortured.
The groundbreaking decision has evoked a powerful debate on both sides of the Atlantic over the controversial question of granting legal rights to animals.
But Americans need not wait for the verdict to take action to protect human’s closest genetic relatives. The Great Ape Protection Act, currently pending in Congress, would phase out invasive research on the estimated 1,200 chimpanzees remaining in U.S. laboratories, stop breeding chimpanzees for invasive research, and retire the approximately 600 federally-owned chimpanzees to permanent sanctuary.
Although the act applies to all great apes, the chimpanzee is the only great ape species currently being used in invasive research and living in U.S. laboratories. Australia, Austria, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, and the United Kingdom already forbid or severely limit experiments on great apes.
Great apes are not used for experimental purposes in Spain, but there is no law against the practice. If the Spanish Parliament resolution becomes law, the use of great apes would be prohibited in experiments, circuses, filming and other for-profit performances.
The move by the Spanish Parliament comes at a time when the European Union awaits the revision of the European Union-wide Directive 86/609, which is expected to include a total ban on great ape research and the use of wild caught primates in all EU member states.
