The Great Ape Project (GAP), founded in 1994, is an international organization of primatologists, anthropologists, ethicists, and other experts who advocate a United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Great Apes that would confer basic legal rights on non-human great apes: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans.
The rights suggested are the right to life, the protection of individual liberty, and the prohibition of torture. The organization also monitors individual great ape activity in the United States through a census program. Once rights are established, GAP would demand the release of great apes from captivity; currently 3,100 are held in the U.S., including 1,280 in biomedical research.
Read more about Great Ape Project: Great Ape Project (book), Declaration On Great Apes, Opposition
Famous quotes containing the words ape and/or project:
“A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“Although I mean it, and project the meaning
As hard as I can into its brushed-metal surface,
It cannot, in this deteriorating climate, pick up
Where I leave off.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)