ANIMALEX is the first and only association in the Republic of Croatia that is providing legal protection of animal rights.
- Organiser: Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb
- Organisation history: founded on July 13, 2017
- Members of the association: Iris Ban-Krošelj, Kristina Glavinić, Ivan Iharoš, Morana Rešetar, Martina Pazin Tošaj
- Contact: animalex.pfzg@gmail.com
The main activity of the Association is reporting criminal and misdemeanor charges to the authorities. Cases of animal abuse and neglect of are most commonly reported to them by citizens and other animal protection associations.
They independently study and investigate all the cases, collect statements and evidence, apply the relevant regulations, report applications and initiate administrative proceedings before the competent authorities, as well as criminal and misdemeanor charges.
ANIMALEX also has a mission to educate citizens through their work. They provide an adequate legal information and guidance to whom and how to properly report the case. For this purpose, they compose detailed textual guidelines published on social networks (the publications reach up to 50,000 followers), they create educational materials and sample reports for the most common violations with appropriate instructions, so that citizens can report abuse and neglect of animals by themselves. They also maintain web seminars on which they talk about the most common misdemeanors and answer questions to citizens.
Furthermore, they have established a cooperation with numerous animal protection associations and local self-government units and they always stand available for the issues they encounter in their work. They have written examples for the decisions of local self-government units for the methods and the conditions of keeping the pets, which was taken over by the Animal Protection Network (association of animal protection in the Republic of Croatia) and has become an example for making such decisions throughout the Republic of Croatia. Also, the City of Zagreb has taken it over in its original form!
So far, they have filed 4 criminal reports (one verdict is final and convicting, the other proceedings are still ongoing) and 20 misdemeanor applications (each was subject to inspection supervision, a prescribed change in the situation, in some cases of dogs were permanently confiscated by owners, 5 misdemeanor proceedings were initiated before the court). They were mediators in 4 cases of peaceful resolution of the conflict.
