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Abstract

The chapter starts from the observation that while animal welfare is increasingly protected in domestic jurisdictions, animal rights are still hardly recognised, although they would serve animals better. It argues that animal rights would need to be universalised in order to deploy effects in a globalised setting. The international legal order is flexible and receptive to non-human personhood which goes with rights. Also, the historical experience with international human rights encourages the animal rights project, because it shows how similar conceptual and normative difficulties have been overcome. Animal rights would complement human rights not the least because the entrenchment of the species hierarchy as manifest in the denial of animal rights in the extreme case condones disrespect for the rights of humans themselves.