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India Sees Dolphins as “Non-human Persons”

Categories: South Asia, India, Environment, Governance, Law
Bottlenose dolphin  credit Peter Asprey on Flickr,  CC-BY-NC  [1]

Bottlenose dolphin credit Peter Asprey on Flickr CC license -BY-NC

The eco-friendly blog Treehugger [2] salutes the Indian law that now sees dolphins as “non-human persons”. This law shows India's leading role in many rights-based arguments:

(…) India became the largest of four countries to ban the practice [3] — which includes Costa Rica, Hungary, and Chile. (…) [The] (…) thoughtful reasoning [of the Ministry] behind the ban seems squarely aimed at the dozens of countries across the globe, like in Europe and the United States, where dolphin shows are big business [4]. (…) “The Indian government [has] spoken out against cruelty, they have contributed to an emerging and vital dialogue about the ways we think about dolphins – as thinking, feeling beings rather than pieces of property to make money off of.”says Ric O’Barry of the Earth Island Institute’s Dolphin Project.” [5]