Building Global Legal Capacity for Animal Rights: ICARE’s High-Leverage Funding Gap for 2026

By mlercier @ 2025-11-27T16:23 (+9)

TL;DR

• Most legal systems still treat animals as property, even when they recognise animal sentience. This structurally limits reform: welfare laws regulate how animals may be used—not whether exploitation is permissible.
• ICARE (International Centre for Animal Rights and Ethics) addresses a critical global bottleneck: the lack of legal capacity for rights-based animal advocacy, especially in Majority World regions.
• In just over a year—and with no funding for our open-access resources, research projects, legal analyses, and publications—ICARE has:
  • produced ~100 open-access legal resources,
  • created a global Resource Library,
  • launched multi-country research projects,
  • published several legal analyses, op-eds, and publications,
  • hosted and built a growing archive of seminars, lectures, and blogs.
• Our courses are highly cost-effective, training nearly 150 advocates from 50+ countries with a very lean budget, high completion rates, and substantial self-reported gains in legal knowledge, reasoning, and strategic advocacy skills.
• ICARE is still volunteer-run. Funding staff is the biggest constraint to scaling our impact.
• Our 2026 funding gap is 40k USD to hire our first full-time legal researcher, a part-time comms role, and to sustain and expand our courses and subsidised access for Majority World advocates.
• Marginal funding goes exceptionally far: most of ICARE’s global outputs to date were created with zero budget; with paid staff, we can expand outputs dramatically, increase multilingual access, and accelerate the creation of rights-based legal material worldwide.

1. The problem: welfare laws structurally permit animal exploitation

Even where legal systems have progressed symbolically, their foundations remain welfarist and anthropocentric. Welfare requirements regulate conditions of use but do not restrict exploitation itself.

• In the European Union, animals are recognised as ‘sentient beings’, yet Article 13 TFEU only obliges institutions and Member States to ‘pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals’ within specific policy areas.^[1]
• In France, Article 515–14 of the Civil Code states that ‘animals are living beings endowed with sentience’ but maintains their status as property.^[2]
• Québec recognises animals as ‘sentient beings that have biological needs’ (C.C.Q. art. 898.1) but again preserves the property regime.^[3]
• Germany^[4] and Switzerland^[5] include animals or the dignity of living beings in constitutional frameworks, but these provisions are still formulated as state objectives rather than enforceable rights for animals.

Even the UK’s Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022^[6] operates within a system that presumes animals may be used and killed so long as welfare procedures are followed.

Across jurisdictions:

• exploitation is lawful; welfare regulates how, not whether, animals may be used;
• sentience is recognised but regularly overridden by economic interests.

For the long-term trajectory of animal protection globally, rights-based frameworks are essential.

But legal expertise to develop and advance such frameworks is extremely scarce worldwide, especially in Majority World regions.

 This is a high-leverage gap, and ICARE was founded to fill it.

2. ICARE’s theory of change: building legal capacity as a global multiplier

ICARE works on a simple insight: 

Rights-based progress depends on legal capacity and the infrastructure that supports it.

Despite the growth of animal advocacy, rights-based legal expertise remains extremely scarce globally—especially outside North America and Western Europe. 

Most advocates working on animal issues lack access to:

• specialised legal education in animal rights law and practical training in animal advocacy skills,,
• comparative and international legal analysis,
• paywalled academic resources,
• global networks to exchange legal strategies,
• mentoring and collaboration opportunities,
• and research tools grounded in rights-based frameworks.

This legal capacity gap severely limits the scale of rights-based change.

ICARE was founded to address this bottleneck precisely by:

• training advocates globally (especially Majority World advocates);
• making rights-oriented education affordable to all and, to a large extent, freely available;
• producing open-access research and analysis;
• building a community of animal rights and vegan advocates;
• creating legal tools and infrastructure for long-term animal rights work.

This creates multipliers: each trained advocate applies new skills and knowledge within their NGO, academic, policy, scientific, grassroots, or media context in their own countries—expanding the reach of rights-based legal thinking far beyond ICARE itself, especially in regions where this expertise is highly neglected but urgently needed.

3. What ICARE has accomplished so far (and what we learned)

In just over a year, ICARE has built a global footprint:

Education (extremely cost-effective)

• Nearly 150 advocates trained (or being trained) across live and on-demand editions of the Contemporary Issues in Animal Rights Law (CIARL) course and the 2025 Summer Course 'Bridging Animal Rights Theory and Practice'.
• Participants from 50+ countries across six continents, including lawyers, NGO staff, researchers, journalists, veterinarians, philanthropists, organisers, and more.
• Almost half received scholarships, particularly advocates in Majority-World contexts.

Many students already apply what they learned in:

• litigation,
• legislative campaigns,
• academic research,
• NGO strategy,
• teaching,
• and government or policy-adjacent roles.

These outcomes signal strong early effects despite minimal cost.

Open-access resources (all created with 0 USD)

• Produced ~100 original educational resources across four weekly series:
  • Key Concepts for Animal Rights Law
  • Legal News About Animals
  • AI & Animals
  • Bibliography Recommendations
• Created a Resource Library organising these materials for global use.
• Prepared a 100-page open-access e-book on core concepts in animal rights law (forthcoming).

Seminars and public lectures

• Hosted five seminars and public lectures on topics such as strategic litigation for chickens and preventive bans on octopus farming.
• All recordings, transcripts, and takeaways are made available open-access.

Community and mentorship

• Built ARVAN, a community of alumni and advocates on Hive's Slack.
• Launched ARVAN ongoing mentee calls; developing a 1:1 mentorship programme for 2026.

Research and advocacy

• Conducting multi-country research on animals in disasters;
• Conducting multi-country research on political representation of animals and direct democracy;.
• Conducting multi-country research on wildlife trafficking enforcement and preparing a policy memo on post-confiscation rights of animals;
• Publishing accessible legal analysis, op-eds, and publications on major EU and global developments;
• Presented research at the Animal Law Conference (ALDF) and the Animal Law & Advocacy Conference (Animal Justice, Canada).

All of this has been achieved with minimal staff and a lean budget.

Lessons learned

• Demand for high-quality, accessible, rights-based legal materials and training is higher and more global than anticipated.
• Producing these resources at scale requires dedicated research, execution, and communications time; relying solely on volunteers limits depth and speed.
• Many global organisations and advocates, especially in Majority World regions, lack access to legal training or rights-based frameworks—ICARE’s materials are often the first they encounter.
• Advocates repeatedly ask for more advanced modules and multilingual editions, but we cannot deliver them without additional bandwidth.
• The biggest constraint is execution capacity.

These confirm ICARE’s hypothesis: legal education + open access + global reach = movement infrastructure with outsized returns.

4. Why ICARE’s marginal impact is exceptionally high

ICARE is at a classic inflection point:

• We have validated the model.
• The work has proven effective.
• Demand is high and growing faster than capacity.
• Our outputs demonstrate strong cost-effectiveness.
• Our bottleneck is capacity, not ideas or traction.
• Additional funding would dramatically increase output and scale.

Marginal funding unlocks:

• Professionalisation of core functions
• Faster and higher-quality research
• More and better legal resources
• Multilingual materials (Spanish, French, etc.)
• Expanded training capacity and more global reach
• Shovel-ready projects currently on hold due to bandwidth constraints
• Increased reach and engagement through dedicated communications capacity

Even modest funding dramatically increases ICARE’s output and impact.

Most importantly:

ICARE’s entire open-access infrastructure—and much of its global impact—has been built without, or with limited, funding.

Imagine what ICARE could achieve with even modest paid capacity.

Because ICARE runs extremely leanly:

• 40k USD unlocks a year of full-time legal research capacity.
• A part-time comms role dramatically increases reach, freeing legal staff for substantive work.

A typical donation of:

• $50 can fund a scholarship in our CIARL on-demand course.
• $80 can fund a public lecture.
• $100 can fund our Zoom subscription for one year.
• $160 can fund two hours of live teaching.
• $200 can fund our website for one year.
• $500 can fund networking costs (attending and presenting at a conference).
• $1000 can fund administrative costs.
• $2,000 can fund an intensive seminar.
• $5000 can fund an entire course.
• $10000 can fund a part-time communications staff.

Because ICARE produces foundational materials and trains advocates, each dollar generates downstream effects across jurisdictions—multiplying legal capacity in a neglected field with massive long-term implications for animals.

5. Our funding needs for 2026

To meet growing demand and scale responsibly, ICARE seeks 40,000 USD in flexible funding to support:

1. A full-time legal researcher

To scale comparative research, produce rights-based legal analyses, and support NGOs and advocates needing specialised expertise.

2. A part-time communications role

To increase reach, maintain dissemination, and free legal capacity currently absorbed by comms, enabling a professionalised growth phase. 

3. Course delivery and scholarships

Covering core course costs and enabling subsidised or free access for advocates in Majority World regions, where legal capacity-building is both highly neglected and high-leverage.

In 2026, we have notably planned to scale our CIARL live course, launching two new regional editions (Africa and Latin America) of our flagship animal rights law course, after surveying animal advocates this past September.

Even moderate funding meaningfully shifts ICARE’s long-term capacity.

6. Why support ICARE now

ICARE has already built global legal infrastructure, and proven a cost-effective, high-impact model with:

• no paid staff,
• limited funding,
• and a fully volunteer-powered team.

We have:

• global demand,
• strong, measurable learning outcomes,
• replication-ready programmes,
• a strong and growing international network,
• foundational research underway,
• extremely lean operations
• and a clear path to professionalisation.

But we are reaching the limits of what can be done without dedicated staff. We are now at the phase where paid capacity will multiply our impact and enable ICARE to scale sustainably and globally.

ICARE has proven we can deliver extraordinary value with minimal funding. Funding now enables us to scale this value systematically, sustainably, and globally.

Supporting ICARE in 2026 means strengthening a core pillar of long-term, rights-based animal advocacy: legal capacity-building.

7. Ways to support ICARE

If you believe that animals deserve more than ‘humane’ exploitation—that they deserve legal systems that protect them as rights-holders— ICARE is building the foundations for that future.

You can support ICARE by:

• donating, especially flexible funding;
• connecting us with aligned funders or partners
• sharing our courses and resources;
• joining ARVAN via mentoring an advocate;
• collaborating on education, research, or advocacy projects.

ICARE is helping build a world where animals are recognised not as property, but as rights-holders whose lives matter.

This is a long-term project, but with your support, we are building the future they deserve.

1. ^{^}

   Consolidated Version of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union art. 13, Oct. 26, 2012, 2012 O.J. (C 326) 54

2. ^{^}

   Code civil [Civil Code] [C. civ.] art. 515-14 (Fr.)

3. ^{^}

   Code civil du Québec [C.C.Q.] art. 898.1 (Can.)

4. ^{^}

   Grundgesetz [GG] [Basic Law] art. 20a (Ger.)

5. ^{^}

   Bundesverfassung der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft [BV] [Federal Constitution] art. 120, SR 101 (Switz.); see also Gieri Bolliger, Legal Protection of Animal Dignity in Switzerland: Status Quo and Future Perspectives, 22 Animal L. 311 (2016)

6. ^{^}

   Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022, c. 22, § 5(1) (U.K.)