The Seattle-based Great Ape Project, founded by Australian philosopher Peter Singer, is campaigning for the United Nations to adopt its Declaration on Great Apes, which would see chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans included in a "community of equals" with humans, and which would extend to them the protection of three basic interests: the right to life, the protection of individual liberty, and the prohibition of torture. Switzerland recognized animals as beings, not things, in 1992, and in 2002, the protection of animals was added to the German constitution. Some countries have passed legislation awarding recognition to the interests of animals. The claim, in other words, is that animals should no longer be regarded legally or morally as property, or treated merely as resources for human purposes, but should instead be regarded as persons. It is a radical social movement, insofar as it aims not merely to attain more humane treatment for animals, but also to include species other than human beings within the moral community by giving their basic interests - for example, the interest in avoiding suffering - the same consideration as our own. Animal rights, or animal liberation, is the movement to protect animals from being used or regarded as property by human beings.
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