Limitations

If we take into account all of the existing regulations, one may ask: “What is problematic then? ” We cannot deny the fact that more and more countries are getting involved in the process of protection of animals during transportation. At the same time, the essential factor here is that animals do not have a status of legal personality, like human-beings do. Incidents that happen to animals are still analyzed and considered in the framework of laws that are based on the protection of human rights^{^[10]}. For example, the Convention encourages people to protect the rights of animals as part of “Right to a Healthy Environment”^{^[11]}. That is, even if people are motivated to establish regulations on the basis of safety by their own “Right to a Healthy Environment”, animals are merely objects of international law. In addition to this, while people may have a representative in court, animals are not granted such a possibility. The limitation was partly explained by the fact that animals, as opposed to humans, cannot sign contracts and thus cannot borrow these obligations and be considered as a legal personality. ^{^[12]}

There are specific examples regarding the attitude towards animals. One should understand that changes, which keep happening in the contemporary world, follow the need to also underline not changed stance to animals. For instance, the example of Criminal Code of Russian Federation and the Article 137, which considers animals as a part of a property^{^[13]}. The fact that there are still cases, connected with direct identification of animals as a property and their inability to be considered as a legal personality or at least being able to fit into certain obligations, states a fact that there are indeed valuable limitations in this particular case.

Consequently, there is still a place for a development for legal protection of animal rights. Since we can notice a huge number of cases where pets were harmed during transportation, it might be expected that in the nearest future the situation in regard to the legal personality of animals may shift.

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