|
More Uncaged sites:
Contact us:
Uncaged Campaigns,
9 Bailey Lane,
Sheffield,
S1 4EG, UK
+44 (0) 114 272 2220
info@uncaged.co.uk
|
|
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."
Related links:
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.
Related links:
|
