Chapter 01: Emancipation

Non-human Rights

Non-human Rights
Paulo Tavares

In the new Constitution of Ecuador (2008), Nature, as similar to human beings, is defined as a subject of law. This legal text challenges the ways by which modern-western societies conceive the material world, projecting a radical Universalist ethos based on the commonality between humans and non-humans.

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Chapter 01: Emancipation

Excerpts from interview with Alberto Acosta, politician and writer, former president of the Monstecristi Constitution Assembly of Ecuador.

Chapter 01: Emancipation
Artist/Author: Paulo Tavares

Archive images of the landmark indigenous uprising of 1990 in Ecuador (CONAIE). Acosta narrates the political-historical foundations behind the introduction of the Rights of Nature in the constitutional law of Ecuador in 2008. Non-human rights as part of the history of human emancipation, a new universalism.