The Dean of this centre, Javier Palao; the IDH-UV director, Consuelo Ramón; and the Professor Javier de Lucas will inaugurate at 10 a.m. this seminar, open to the general public until full capacity.

The aim of the seminar, explains Professor Consuelo Ramón, is “to offer a space, precisely in the Faculty of Law, so that associative, academic, philosophical and scientific initiatives can be presented and discussed around the recognition and guarantee of animal rights. This way, we continue with a research line and teaching on animal rights that has year of tradition in our IDH”.

Marta Tafalla, Philosophy Professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, will give at 10:30 a.m. the first conference under the title Ecoanimal, una estética plurisensorial, ecologista y animalista (Ecoanimal, a multi-sensorial, ecologist and animalist aesthetic). At 11: 30 a.m. Manuel Peris (IDH-UV) will follow with the lecture Literatura en defensa de la causa animal: el caso Modiano (Literature in defence of the animal cause: the Modiano case). La deuda de la filosofía con los animales.  La mirada de Nietzsche (Philosophy’s debt to animals. The Nietzsche approach) is the title of the last conference of the morning, at 12:30 p.m. and will be given by Virtudes Azpitarte, pre-doctoral researcher at the IDH-UV.

The evening session will begin at 4:30 p.m. with a lecture given by Amparo Requena, president of the association Abogados Valencianos en Defensa Animal (AVADA, Valencian Lawyers in Animal Defence) entitled Los abogados y la defensa jurídica de los animales (Lawyers and the legal defence of animals). At 5:30 p.m., Amada Perales, pre-doctoral researcher at the IDH-UV and lawyer for the NGO Equalia will present a conference entitled Una iniciativa legislativa sobre los mataderos para mejorar el control efectivo sobre las actividades y procedimientos seguidos en los mismos (A legislative initiative on slaughterhouses to improve effective control over the activities and procedures followed in them). At 6:00 p.m. the intervention of Leo Anselmi, member of the F. Weber Foundation, will take place with a lecture on the experiences of animal shelters.  From 6:30 p.m., conferences coordinated by the Professors José Antonio García Sáez (IDH-UV) will take place: Avances en la regulación de transporte de animales (Improvements on animal transport regulations) by Juan Antonio Oliver Durà, coordinator of Valencia Animal Save; and La contribución de Valencia Animal Save (The contribution of Valencia Animal Save) by Julia Elizalde Monteagudo. Coordinator of Valencia Animal Save.

Created in 2005, the IDH-UV aims to disseminate the values inherent in human rights; to create a framework for reflection and dialogue on them; to develop research on human rights; to promote the dissemination of scientific works on human rights; and to promote the teaching of human rights. In 2008, the Institute of Human Rights of the Universitat de València received a grant under the Consolider-Ingenio 2010 programme. The institute is part of a project in which twelve research groups of different Spanish universities participate, coordinated by the Bartolomé de las Casas Institute of Human Rights of the UC3M of Madrid.  It was the very first time that a team made up of researchers from the legal field obtained this type of grant, mostly aimed at scientific contexts far removed from the Humanities and Social Sciences.