Today Brazil has four sanctuaries affiliated that host more than 70 chimpanzees rescued from circus, bad structured zoos or from people who used to exploit them with economical purposes. GAP (in English, Great Ape Project) is a international movement whose main purpose is to guarantee the basic rights to life, freedom and non-torture of the non-human great apes – Chimpanzees, Gorillas, Orangotans and Bonobos.
 
In the region, Sorocaba gives place to the biggest of the four sanctuaries of great primates in the country. Nowadays, according to GAP\’s press assessment, it rehomes more than 40 chimpanzees and the installations, considered to be the most secure ones, are prepared to receive more primates who need shelter. The fixed team of the sanctuary has one veterinarian, who manages the ambulatory, and a biologist, who develops environmental enrichment with the "guests".

Among the plans of expansion is the building of a specific area for social and cultural development of the chimpanzees, which is being kindly called "little school", and of a surgery centre, to more specialized emergency attendance.
 
When Pedro A. Ynterian assumed the presidency of GAP International, he converted Brazil in the headquarters of the project. "We are signing the importance of a work developed in the country by a group of men and women who has been dedicating hours and days of their lives to this hard fight, and sometimes they are not comprehended, to recognize to the great primates the basic rights in our humane society", explains Ynterian.
 
In nine years of militancy for GAP, he guarantees that the results in Brazil are impressive. "Today we are recognized as a movement that fights with a reason and firmly for the rights of our brothers primates", points. "We have formed and helped to form four sanctuaries of rescue of great primates, where 74 chimpanzees live with decency and love, a lot of them released from torture, abuse and incomprehension of humans. More than 70 TV programmes had been produced during these years and promoted our efforts. Our website is extraordinarily visited by several sectors of the society, which gives us strength and encouragement so we can continue our fight", the president concludes.

GAP project was the result of ideas developed by renowned Australian philosopher Peter Singer, who launched the idea to the world in the last decade and gave birth to this campaign aiming to provide a new status to the great primates. In a few years the awareness has raised and many people\’s attitudes to the reality that the great primates are men\’s brothers, genetically, of blood and of a common ancestor, have been changing.

"It is not easy to change concepts in human societies. A lot of times it takes centuries to reach it. GAP was successful in less than two decades of existence. Fighting against prejudices and against the exploitation of these defenseless beings aiming the profit of a few, the chimpanzees, especially in our country, are gaining people status. It is important to extend this to the world", points Ynterian.
 
GAP in Spain, who fights for years for its recognition, managed, recently, to be accept by the Parliament of the country as a project that must be supported and put in practice. Currently, director of the project in Europe, Paco Cuellar, is with a group of volunteers in Senegal, getting close to lowlands chimpanzees who live there, discovered recently by North American primatologist Jill Pruetz. "The existence of chimpanzees in opened areas, living in caves, in spite of the danger that surrounds them, is a proof that chimpanzees – like humans – are not citizens of a region, but citizens of the world, and have the right to live with decency and respect anywhere in the world, without being exploited, abused, commercialized or slavered", president of GAP International comments.

In nine years, the project rescued the great majority of the chimpanzees who used to live in circus in Brazil, interrupted reproduction process to sell babies and also showed to the rest of the world what they are able to do and to understand, through reports of stories from the sanctuaries. Now, the main objective of GAP, according to its president, is to gain, for them, the basic rights in the society. "This will be our main commitment", concludes.
 
THEY ARE OUR BROTHERS
 
From the biological point of view, among two human beings it can be a difference of 0,5% in the DNA. Between a man and a chimpanzee the difference is only 1,23%. This similarity is demonstrated, for instance, with the fact that chimpanzees are blood donators to men, and vice-versa. Today it is also known that chimpanzees, bonobos and men had a common ancestor 2 millions years ago. Considering these facts, the commercial exploitation of great primates in labs, circus, shows and zoos can be considered a kind of slavery, reminding what men used to do with their equals considered to be inferior a little bit more than half century ago. And this exploitation is followed by a drastic reduction of the number of great primates in Asian and African forests, their origin habitat, damaging all the environmental equilibrium of the ecosystems.