ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses three developments that are characteristic of the changing nature of human rights: inter-generational rights, animal rights, and ecosystem rights. Two very influential monographs on animal rights were published in the 1970s and early 1980s, Animal Liberation by Peter Singer and The Case for Animal Rights by Tom Regan. An increasing number of animal rights groups have tried to raise awareness about the abusive conditions in keeping animals, mass animal farming, and medical research laboratories. At the national level, the animal rights movement was successful in achieving stronger legal protection for animals by lobbying for an inclusion of animal rights into national constitutions. After the adoption of the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth in 2010, the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature was founded at a meeting in Patate, Ecuador. This is an umbrella organization comprising civil society groups that are promoting the rights of nature and ecosystems.
