‘ESTRELLITA’S LAW’: Ecuador’s High Court to consider animals as rights-holders deserving habeas corpus protection
In a landmark ruling, Ecuador is the first country in the world to recognize the rights of nature at the constitutional level. The court will now consider whether the rights of nature also apply to animals.
LIAM HIGGINS: In a case being followed closely by animal rights advocates around the world, Ecuador’s Constitutional Court has agreed to consider the rights of Estrellita, a chorongo monkey. Estrellita was taken from her owners in Quito last year and placed in a zoo where she died a month later.
The court will consider whether the rights of nature recognized in Ecuador’s constitution also apply to animals. Under current law, all animals, both wild and domestic, are considered personal property. One question the court has agreed to consider is whether animals taken from the wild can access habeas corpus protection…
Estrellita was taken from the jungle when she was a month old following the death of her mother, her owners say. The owners trained her to dress, eat at the dinner table and sleep in a bed. She was taken from her owners and put in a zoo by the government based on the law that monkeys cannot be held in captivity. “We are not dealing with Estrellita’s removal by the government per se, since it confuses the larger issue of the rights of nature,” says Echeverría. “Nature is where life is lived and reproduced and the question before the court is if the creatures within nature are protected.”
In November, a lower court judge rejected the case, calling it an “an unnecessary waste of resources in the administration of justice” and called Estrellita an “inert thing.” The judge also said a ruling could confuse domestic animals with wild animals…
Environmental lawyer Hugo Echeverría says that the issue of illegal possession by the owners will not be part of Estrellita’s case. “There is a deeper question here in terms of analyzing the legal categorization of animals in Ecuador,” he says. “The question is whether or not animals are part of nature and protected by our constitution. To us, the logical answer is yes”…
Pablo Alarcón, constitutional scholar and director of the Graduate School of Law at the Universidad Espíritu Santo in Quito considers Estrellita’s case legitimate. “Some people call it frivolous but it is a case that demands examination of Ecuador’s constitutional language guaranteeing the rights of nature,” he says. “As long this is in the constitution the question of what constitutes nature can’t be ignored.”
According to Alarcón, the aim of the case is not to personify animals, but to “de-objectify them and establish that they are beings that have rights and deserve dignity.” Ultimately, he says, the court must consider animal rights in relation to human rights. Among the international parties following the case is the Harvard Law School Animal Law and Policy Program and its Non Humans Right Project. Harvard says it plans to file an amicus curiae brief. SOURCE…
[The NhRP issued the following statement (in part)]:
NhRP: With the Constitutional Court of Ecuador set to rule for the first time on the question of nonhuman animals’ legal status, The Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School (ALPP) and the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) have jointly filed an amicus curiae brief with the Court, urging it to recognize that nonhuman animals can have legal rights.
“In this time of catastrophic climate crisis and the sixth mass extinction of species, Ecuador is a regional and world leader in developing and protecting the rights of nature and this case presents an opportunity to deepen that reputation,” the ALPP and the NhRP write in the brief. “The case is also novel and important for the development of habeas corpus and its application to nonhuman animals in Ecuador, Latin America, and globally”…
Drawing on the authors’ shared expertise and interest in the consideration of nonhuman animals’ legal status, the brief argues that habeas corpus can apply to nonhuman animals, that individual nonhuman animals have rights under the rights of nature framework adopted in the Ecuadorian Constitution, and that the Court should order the relevant governmental entities to create protocols to guarantee the rights of nonhuman animals, whether derived under the rights of nature or directly through access to the writ of habeas corpus.
The brief points to the scientific evidence of the cognitive and social complexity of woolly monkeys and argues that they “should at minimum possess the right to bodily liberty” and that “the environmental authority should have protected Estrellita’s rights by examining her specific circumstances before placing her in the zoo”…
Ecuador is the first country in the world to recognize the rights of nature at the constitutional level. On Dec. 2, in what is being hailed as a landmark ruling, the Constitutional Court prohibited mining in the Los Cedros Protected Forest under the rights of nature. A ruling in the case is expected in the coming months. SOURCE…
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