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the universal declaration of animal rights
"The ascription of moral and legal rights to animals, and
their enshrinement in a United Nations Declaration of Animal
Rights is a logical and inevitable progression of ethical
thinking."
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On December 10th 1948, the United Nations General
Assembly ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
 The
Declaration enshrined the principle that human beings could no
longer be treated in law or public policy as mere tools of the
powerful or subjects of the state, but that they possess
inherent value, and must be permitted to live their lives
according to the priorities they themselves identify, in so far
as they do not infringe the rights of others. The ratification
of the UDHR symbolised the triumph of humanitarianism in the
aftermath of the most destructive war in human history, at the
midpoint of what had already become the most destructive century
in human history.
However partial and inadequate our implementation of the
principles of human rights has been since 1948, the UDHR marked
the beginning of a new era in human morality and rhetoric, in
which compassion, justice and the rights of the individual
finally came to assume precedence over the dictates of power.
As December 10th approaches, we salute the vision of those
who framed the Declaration of Human Rights, and the efforts of
all those who have sought to turn that ideal into reality. We
acknowledge the responsibility upon us all to challenge and
overcome the abuse of human rights throughout the world, but we
also believe that the greatest tribute that can be paid to the
idealism of 1948 is to acknowledge the limitations of our own
ideals, and to seek to shape the morality of our own future in
the same way as the framers of the Declaration of Human Rights
in their time.
 We
believe that the future belongs neither to the entrenchment nor
the consolidation of the ideals of 1948 but to their extension.
Specifically, we believe that the time has come to recognise the
moral imperative to include non-human animals within the sphere
of protection that the Declaration establishes. The human race
has long recognised that animals are not merely the instruments
of our desires or will, and that the reality of their capacity
to experience pleasure and pain, happiness and suffering,
compels us to recognise that moral limits must apply to our
treatment of non-human as surely as to human.
The ascription of moral and legal rights to animals, and
their enshrinement in a United Nations Declaration of Animal
Rights is the logical and inevitable progression of this
principle. We introduce, therefore, the Universal Declaration of
Animal Rights:
- Inasmuch as there is ample evidence that many animal
species are capable of feeling, we condemn totally the
infliction of suffering upon our fellow creatures and the
curtailment of their behavioural and other needs save where
this is necessary for their own individual benefit.
- We do not accept that a difference in species alone (any
more than a difference in race) can justify wanton
exploitation or oppression in the name of science or sport,
or for use as food, for commercial profit or for other human
ends.
- We believe in the evolutionary and moral kinship of all
animals and declare our belief that all sentient creatures
have rights to life, liberty and natural enjoyment.
- We therefore call for the protection of these rights.
The exploitation of animals by human beings is as deeply
entrenched in human culture this century as the exploitation of
our fellow human beings was in the last century. The progress in
human rights that characterised the 20th and 21st century would
have appeared no less radical to our ancestors than the
abolition of animal exploitation appears now. All such
exploitation predates any question of animal or even human
rights, and it is our responsibility to seek moral guidance not
in tradition or familiarity but in the enlightened principles of
justice and compassion that have shaped the ideals of our own
time. The assumption that animals cannot have rights because we
have not yet given them rights belongs to the past. We must seek
the truth with open minds, and in the full consciousness that
the future has always belonged to those with the courage and
vision to question the received wisdom of their day. Today,
fifty-three years after the formal establishment of the rights
of human beings, the time is right to bring this argument
forward.
 The
differences between homo sapiens and other animals are legion,
but evolution teaches us that we are, at a fundamental level,
bound by profound similarities. Genetically almost
indistinguishable from our closest primate relatives, human
beings are not the pinnacle of evolution, but one tiny branch on
its great tree.
The lesson of evolution is that we should expect
commonalities between human and non-human in almost every
respect.
Science, as much as experience, teaches us that it is no
longer possible to assume that animals are mere machines, or
bundles of instinct and reflex: they may flourish in freedom or
languish under oppression just as we do. We may no longer seek
refuge in ignorance.
Animals may not be able to express their interests in our
language, or explicitly claim their rights from us, but the
existence of their interests is beyond question. All animals
seek to protect their own lives, preserve their freedom, seek
what gives them pleasure and avoid what gives them displeasure
or pain - in short to live their lives according to their own
priorities. More than this, animals possess and express
distinguishing characteristics as individuals. In all these
respects, they are akin to human beings, however greatly the
details of their lives may differ from ours. If animals suffer
pain, and seek to protect their own lives, freedom and pleasures
just as we do, on what basis can we continue to deny them the
protection that rights grant to our lives, freedom and
pleasures?
It is claimed that animals forfeit the privilege of rights
because they lack our intelligence, our emotional bonds or our
sense of morality, or because they cannot accept the
responsibilities incumbent on the members of society. While few
would deny that almost all humans possess these capabilities to
a far greater extent than animals, why this should deny animals
protection from exploitation or harm has never been established.
Many human beings also lack these qualities: the very young or
those suffering from mental impairments as a result of illness,
congenital handicap or injury. We rightly recognise that these
human beings deserve not less protection but more protection:
not the denial of their rights, but the reinforcement of them.
We owe a special responsibility to those who are unable to reap
the advantages of full participation in human society, and who
are unable to defend their own interests effectively. To apply
opposite principles to human and non-human in this regard is to
be guilty of unjustifiable discrimination.
 Animals
have been denied rights not because of any meaningful or
relevant distinction between human and non-human, but for the
same reason that human beings have been and continue to be
denied rights: because ascribing them rights threatens the
freedom of those in power. The rights of human beings have been
won at the expense of the privileges of the rich and the
powerful, and in the face of their resistance. The source of
resistance to this emancipation of animals is not reason or
justice, but a false notion of human self-interest.
Ultimately, the rights of animals threaten the freedom of
some human beings to use them as they see fit, or to further
their own particular ends. The arguments against the rights of
animals withstand neither logical nor ethical scrutiny because
they are the rearguard action of a defeated, specious
philosophy.
The pretence that human affairs exist in isolation from those
of all other living creatures on our planet is no longer
sustainable. Evolution teaches us not arrogance but humility,
and the greater follies of our technological century serve to
reinforce the lesson that the natural world is neither our
property or our servant. The further pretence that the exclusion
of others from the benefits of compassion and justice can be
justified by our status as the dominant species is untenable.
Power is no longer the measure of moral worth. That is the
lesson of our age.
Just as the framers of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights acted both in the long established philosophical
traditions of the Enlightenment and in response to the horrific
events of the first part of the twentieth century, so the
framers of the Declaration on Animal Rights were motivated both
by the humanist philosophical tradition and by the unprecedented
nature and extent of animal exploitation at the end of the 20th
Century.
 Factory
farming, the destruction of the natural environment and the
introduction of novel scientific procedures such as cloning and
xenotransplantation represent abuse of the lives and interests
of animals unimaginable even half a century ago. The coexistence
of the recognition of the principle of individual rights for
human beings and of the institutionalised abuse and exploitation
of individual animals on a global scale represents an ethical
challenge that can no longer be ignored, and which, we believe,
will determine the progress of morality and, inevitably,
civilisation in the coming century.
The Declaration of the Rights of Animals is as much a
statement of intent as it is of principle. We marked the
fiftieth anniversary of the original Declaration by announcing
our intention to achieve the aim of enshrining the rights of
animals in the policy of the United Nations by the centenary of
that date, the 10th December 2048. The challenge facing human
society is to redefine our understanding of progress such that
our recognition and protection of the rights of animals is as
much a barometer of our level of civilisation as our recognition
and protection of the rights of human beings. The evolution of
human civilisation, its principles as well as its practice, will
not end with the twentieth century: the citizens of the coming
century, who are the children and young people of today, will
not fail to grasp the opportunity to mark the moral progress of
their time as we have defined ours. The future is theirs but it
begins with us, today.
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