[  Note: the URL of this article is:
   http://www.greatapeproject.org/gapintroduction.html  ]

The Great Ape Project is an idea, a book, and an organization.

  * The idea is radical but simple: to include the non-human great
    apes within the community of equals by granting them the basic
    moral and legal protection that only human beings currently enjoy.
  * The book, which is the collective work of a group of scientists
    and scholars, is a multi-faceted argument against the unthinking
    denial of fundamental rights to beings who are not members of our
    own species, but who quite evidently possess many of the
    characteristics that we consider morally important.
  * The organization is an international group founded to work for the
    removal of the non-human great apes from the category of property,
    and for their immediate inclusion within the category of persons.

                     A DECLARATION ON GREAT APES

We demand the extension of the community of equals to include all
great apes: human beings, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and
orang-utans. The "community of equals" is the moral community within
which we accept certain basic moral principles or rights as governing
our relations with each other and enforceable at law. Among these
principles or rights are the following:

1. The Right to Life

The lives of members of the community of equals are to be protected.
Members of the community of equals may not be killed except in very
strictly defined circumstances, for example, self-defence.

2. The Protection of Individual Liberty

Members of the community of equals are not to be arbitrarily deprived
of their liberty; if they should be imprisoned without due legal
process, they have the right to immediate release. The detention of
those who have not been convicted of any crime, or of those who are
not criminally liable, should be allowed only where it can be shown to
be for their own good, or necessary to protect the public from a
member of the community who would clearly be a danger to others if at
liberty. In such cases, members of the community of equals must have
the right to appeal, either directly or, if they lack the relevant
capacity, through an advocate, to a judicial tribunal.

3. The Prohibition of Torture

The deliberate infliction of severe pain on a member of the community
of equals, either wantonly or for an alleged benefit to others, is
regarded as torture, and is wrong.


                     ABOUT THE GREAT APE PROJECT

Anyone who indicates their endorsement of the Declaration on Great
Apes can become a supporter of the organization, which takes the
Anti-Slavery Society as its political model. We already have
supporters in more than twenty nations. We will start operating at a
national level in as many countries as possible. Activities range from
public education, to campaigning, to the adoption of individual
imprisoned non-human great apes. From small-scale, local
interventions, we will work up towards an international level, so as
to bring about a momentous but well-grounded change in the status of
chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans.

Our long-term goal is a United Nations Declaration of the Rights of
Great Apes. When this historic result has been achieved, we will
advocate the setting up of guarded territories so that chimpanzees,
gorillas, bonobos and orang-utans can continue to live as free beings
in their own ways.

The following text is taken from the book The Great Ape Project:
Equality Beyond Humanity.

  "At present, only members of the species homo sapiens are regarded
  as members of the community of equals. The inclusion, for the first
  time, of non-human animals into this community is an ambitious
  project. The chimpanzee (including in this term both pan
  troglodytes and the pygmy chimpanzee, pan paniscus), the gorilla,
  gorilla gorilla, and the orang-utan, pongo pygmaeus, are the
  closest relatives of our species. They also have mental capacities
  and an emotional life sufficient to justify inclusion within the
  community of equals. To the objection that chimpanzees, gorillas
  and orang-utans will be unable to defend their own claims within
  the community, we respond that human guardians should safeguard
  their interests and rights, in the same ways as the interests of
  young or intellectually disabled members of our own species are
  safeguarded."

Our request comes at a special moment in history. Never before has our
dominion over other animals been so pervasive and systematic. Yet this
is also the moment when, within that very Western civilization that
has so inexorably extended this dominion, a rational ethic has emerged
challenging the moral significance of membership of our own species.
This challenge seeks equal consideration for the interests of all
animals, human and non-human.

It has given rise to a political movement, still fluid but growing.
The slow but steady widening of the scope of the golden rule "treat
others as you would have them treat you" has now resumed its course.
The notion of `us' as opposed to `the other', which, like a more and
more abstract silhouette, assumed in the course of centuries the
contours of the boundaries of the tribe, of the nation, of the race,
of the human species, and which for a time the species barrier had
congealed and stiffened has again become something alive, ready for
further change.

The Great Ape Project aims at taking just one step in this process of
extending the community of equals. We shall provide ethical argument,
based on scientific evidence about the capacities of gorillas,
chimpanzees, bonobos and orang-utans, for taking this step. Whether
this step should also be the first of many others is not for the Great
Ape Project to say. No doubt some of us, speaking individually, would
want to extend the community of equals to many other animals as well;
others may consider that extending the community to include all great
apes is as far as we should go at present. We leave the consideration
of that question for another occasion.

We have not forgotten that we live in a world in which, for at least
three-quarters of the human population, the idea of human rights is no
more than rhetoric, and not a reality in everyday life. In such a
world, the idea of equality for non-human animals, even for those
disquieting doubles of ours, the other great apes, may not be received
with much favour. We recognize, and deplore, the fact that all over
the world human beings are living without basic rights or even the
means for a decent subsistence. The denial of the basic rights of
particular other species will not, however, assist the world's poor
and oppressed to win their just struggles. Nor is it reasonable to ask
that the members of these other species should wait until all humans
have achieved their rights first. That suggestion itself assumes that
beings belonging to other species are of lesser moral significance
than human beings. Moreover, on present indications, the suggested
delay might well be an extremely long one.

Another basis for opposition to our demand may arise from the fact
that the great apes - especially chimpanzees - are considered to be
extremely valuable laboratory tools. Of course, since the main object
of research is to learn about human beings, the ideal subject of study
would be the human being. Harmful research on non-consenting human
beings is, however, rightly regarded as unethical. Because harmful
research on non-consenting chimpanzees, orang-utans, gorillas or
bonobos is not seen in the same light, researchers are permitted to do
things to these great apes that would be considered utterly abhorrent
if done to human beings. Indeed, the value of the other great apes as
research tools lies precisely in the combination of two conflicting
factors: on the one hand, the fact that, both physically and
psychologically, they very closely resemble our own species; and on
the other, the fact that they are denied the ethical and legal
protection that we give to our own species.

Those who wish to defend the present routine treatment of the
non-human great apes in laboratories and in other circumstances -
disturbing detail of which we present in this book - must now bear the
burden of proof in refuting the case we make in these pages for
including all great apes within the community of equals. If our
arguments cannot be refuted, the way in which great apes other than
humans are now treated will be shown to be an arbitrary and
unjustifiable form of discrimination. For this, there will no longer
be any excuse.

The resolution of a moral dispute is often just the beginning, not the
end, of a social question. We know that, even if we can prove our view
to be sound, we will still be far away from the moment when the
dispersed members of the chimpanzee, gorilla, bonobo and orang-utan
species can be liberated and lead their different lives as equals in
their own special territories in our countries, or free in the
equatorial forests to which they once belonged. As normally happens
when ethical progress runs its course, the obstacles will be many, and
opposition from those whose interests are threatened will be strong.

Is success possible? Unlike some oppressed groups that have achieved
equality, chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orang-utans are unable to
fight for themselves. Will we find the social forces prepared to fight
on their behalf to bring about their inclusion within the community of
equals? We believe that success is possible. While some oppressed
humans have achieved victory through their own struggles, others have
been as powerless as chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans are today.
History shows us that there has always been, within our own species,
that saving factor: a squad of determined people willing to overcome
the selfishness of their own group in order to advance another's
cause.

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