Tongan Princess supports whales campaign

SUVA, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Tonga has reasserted its commitment to protecting marine life and advocating for the legal and ethical recognition of whales as fellow beings of the ocean.

Tongan Princess Angelika Latufuipeka Tuku'aho represented the kingdom at the Launch of the "I'm a Person Too" Campaign at the UNESCO Ocean Literacy Pavilion in Nice, France, on Monday, according to Matangi Tonga online.

Princess Angelika affirmed Tonga's enduring dedication to ocean stewardship and praised the campaign as a timely, ethical, and necessary evolution of how people see and protect these majestic creatures.

She further emphasized that recognizing the legal personhood of whales is not only an environmental imperative, but also a moral and cultural one, especially for Pacific Island nations whose identities are closely tied to the ocean and its inhabitants.

The "I'm a Person Too" campaign is an international initiative that seeks to grant legal personhood to whales, recognizing their intrinsic rights and complex emotional and social lives.

It builds upon the vision of the late King Tupou IV, who in 1978 declared the waters of Tonga a whale sanctuary, one of the earliest such declarations in the world, placing Tonga at the forefront of marine conservation in the Pacific. Enditem