Animal Rights: An approach to the Rights of Nature in Ecuador.

Abstract

This study seeks to highlight the main historical antecedents of the complex relationship between human beings and animals, bringing us closer towards the material sources that influenced the creation, transformation and / or derogation from different legal regulations that ultimately reduced animals to the realm of things and objects of law. Simplifying the study of the animal question, we will unravel the scarce but relevant bibliography in respect of this, from the various legal regulations of antiquity, through extravagant medieval trials, arriving at unpublished international treaties, constitutions, laws and ordinances that nowadays support the recognition of animal rights. This brief analysis presents varied philosophical, religious and cultural conceptions that allow us to involve ourselves in the wide debate on the main topics of Animal Law that have grown in popularity in recent decades, starting with the publishing of Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation in 1975, and of the initiative of the Universal Declaration of Animal Rights in 1977. Furthermore, we will quickly look over the advances in the recognition of animal dignity, analysing Article 20 of the German Constitution of 2002, the recognition of the Rights of Nature in the Ecuadorian Constitution of 2008 and the Bolivian Constitution of 2009, and the recognition of animals as sentient beings in the Columbian Civil Code of 2016, as well as Ecuadorian regulations on this topic.