Jun 11, 2025 Animal Well-Being, Sentience and the Rights of Nature
The Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) welcomed new legislation signed by the Mexican President, Claudia Sheinbaum, at the end of 2024, including reforms to the national constitution, enhancing animal protection. Among the reforms is Article 4, which states, “Mistreatment of animals is prohibited. The Mexican state must guarantee the protection, proper treatment, conservation, and care of animals, as specified by the respective laws.” Article 73 empowers the Federal government to enact animal protection laws, a role previously restricted to state and local governments, while Article 3 mandates the inclusion of animal welfare as a subject in school curricula.
In an article (2016) in Oxford Constitutional Law, legal scholars Jessica Eisen and Kristen Stilt review the protection of animals in constitutional law worldwide. According to Eisen and Stilt, Bolivia, Malaysia, and Kenya are the countries with jurisdictional (not prescriptive) animal protection provisions. The countries with prescriptive animal protection language in their constitutions are Austria, Brazil, Egypt, Germany, India, Luxembourg, Slovenia and Switzerland. South Africa could also be argued to have constitutional provisions addressing animal protection. For example, in a 2016 decision by the Constitutional Court of South Africa, the court determined that the National SPCA (an entity established by national legislation – namely, the Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 169 of 1993) had the statutory power of private prosecution of animal cruelty.
As might be expected, many linguistic nuances must be addressed when deciding which constitutions have articles that address animal protection. For example, in the last paragraph of their review, Eisen and Stilt ask, “What are the commonalities and differences in meaning where similar constitutional language is used in diverse jurisdictions—most notably the deployment of ‘dignity’ in the Swiss constitutional text and Indian jurisprudence?” Eisen and Stilt also note that the language used in most countries reflects a welfare view of animal protection rather than an animal rights perspective.
In addition, constitutional provisions on animal protection do not necessarily translate into effective animal protection. For example, Eisen and Stilt comment that Chile and the Netherlands have some of the strongest de facto animal protection laws but no animal protection provisions in their constitutions. Meanwhile, Egypt has included an animal protection provision in its constitution, but the country has some of the weakest de facto legal protections for animals.
Every jurisdiction surveyed continues to treat animals as property, although the Indian Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on the right to life could be viewed as a move in the direction of animal rights. Brazil stands out as the only jurisdiction to have singled out any particular use of animals, in its case, cockfighting, as unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, a Rights of Nature movement (and wild animals are an essential component of Nature) is gathering steam worldwide. In 2006, a Pennsylvania town (Tamaqua) became the first community to pass a “Rights of Nature” ordinance. In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to guarantee rights to nature in its new constitution. Forty countries now recognize the Rights of Nature in their legal systems. On December 21, 2020, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution (its twelfth resolution on Harmony with Nature) requesting the UN to convene an interactive dialogue with member states, independent experts and other relevant stakeholders on Harmony with Nature and Biodiversity on International Mother Earth Day on April 22, 2022.
Meanwhile, support for animal sentience language (a critical building block for animal well-being) is growing. Thirty-two countries, six of which are not EU member states (Australia, Brazil, Chile, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom), have formally recognized non-human animals as sentient creatures.
WellBeing International plans to track global attention to Animal Sentience over time using appropriate natural language processing models and time-series forecasting techniques.