World Animal Justice: A new Movement is Rising

By WAJ Founder Dr Sabine BRELS

World Animal Justice (WAJ) envisions a global paradigm where justice is extended to all sentient beings, recognizing and legally protecting the fundamental rights of animals to live, be free, and be well-treated. This vision challenges the prevailing anthropocentric and economically driven paradigm that has failed to safeguard animals, humans, and the environment. WAJ advocates for a transformative shift to address the widespread and institutionalized cruelty against animals called "crimes against animality."

By drawing parallels with crimes against humanity, WAJ seeks to criminalize egregious acts of cruelty, institutionalized tortures, the massive exploitation and extermination of animals. The movement's ultimate goal is to establish legal instruments to enforce these protections globally, emphasizing the moral imperative and the interconnectedness of animal welfare, human dignity, and environmental sustainability. Through incremental protection and a collaborative approach, WAJ aims to end animal suffering and create a just world for all.

• WHAT IS WORLD ANIMAL JUSTICE ?

World Animal Justice is first a vision. It reflects the vision that we all share as animal advocates to build a new world where justice exists to protect every living and sentient being: humans and non-human animals alike. 

WAJ stands that animals have the fundamental rights to live, to be free and to be well-treated. These fundamental rights should be legally recognized and globally protected. 

World Animal Justice is also a new global movement, as it sets the foundations of a legal paradigm shift. Indeed, the economic and anthropocentric paradigm -of “business as usual”- which remains globally dominant on the international scene should change.

The current paradigm should be urgently replaced by a new paradigm protecting life.

Why? Because this ancient paradigm showed its tremendous limits to not protect animals as they should -morally and legally- be protected worldwide. It also demonstrated that since animals remain the missing piece of the global puzzle, us humans and our environment can not be well-protected neither.

That is why the new paradigm should include the protection of animal beings, whose protection is still almost totally absent from the international rules of the World Game. 

Our humanity can not continue to perpetrate crimes against animals so massively everyday and everywhere in the world. International law should urgently stop this plague. A plague such as factory farming for terrestrial and aquatic animals, vertebrates and invertebrates, the overexploitation of domestic and wild animals. All these crimes are totally unacceptable since we can and should morally do otherwise. Furthermore, this is a vicious circle responsible for human and environmental plagues too, where we can reverse this trend with a virtuous circle which can be beneficial for animals, humans and our planet as well.

Even if we can draw many links between crimes against animals, crimes against humans and crimes against our environment, animal suffering in itself is worthy of global consideration and should be taken more seriously by the law for the high gravity it entails. The massive crimes against animality that are still ongoing for billions of animals worldwide should be stopped. This is our collective responsibility to act in this sense if we are truly 'humane'.

• WHAT IS WAJ ULTIMATE GOAL ?

The final goal of World Animal Justice is to have “crimes against animality” recognized and globally forbidden in international law. How do we plan to get there? 

WAJ is gathering a team of exceptional international animal and criminal lawyers working on this question. The purpose of our WAJ Expert Group is to make proposals to best advance the notion of “crimes against animality” and to find the best ways to advocate for these massive crimes against animals to be banned in international law instruments. 

This can be done in the current international criminal law system, or in proposing an innovative way through the adoption of a new International Criminal Law Treaty or Statute and a special Court dedicated to judge and apply sanctions for crimes against animality. 

As the notion of “crimes against animality” is a brand-new one, we first need to explain what it means and entails. 

In order to define this notion, we can observe the analogy with the notion of “crimes against humanity” defined under the article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. These crimes are: the murders, exterminations, sequestrations, tortures, deportations, sexual violences etc. It is striking to realize that all these crimes are also concerning the many animals victims of these acts worldwide, mostly in a legal manner.

Nowadays, the extermination of animals concern many animal categories and can be legitimately called a "zoocide" (by analogy with the "genocide" for humans and the "ecocide" for animals). It concerns mostly farm animals (200 billion per year worldwide), wild animals (25% of wild species are currently endangered), laboratory animals used for experiments and testing (115 millions per year worldwide), stray animals etc.

In total, it is approximately 570 millions of animals killed per day in the world for all of them. This number results from scientific sources and, unfortunately, it is not overestimated.

This number is So Huge that it can be pretty hard to conceive with our human brain. To give you an idea of what it represents, here is a comparison:

If humans would be killed at the same rate than animals are today, there would be no more humans on Earth in only 2 weeks. And we are now 8 billion, which is quite a big number.

If happening for humans, this would be probably called a huge 'crime against humanity'. And it is the reality for animals. This is a huge 'crimes against animality'. And this is happening despite the current animal laws, too limited to some countries, somes animals, some practices and some activities, but never totally banning the worst criminal activities.

-> Therefore, animals are the victims of the most massive legal crimes worldwide.

• HOW CAN WE COMBAT CRIMES AGAINST ANIMALITY WORLDWIDE ?

WAJ plans to advocate for a step-by-step incremental criminalization. In this sense, crimes against animality can be classified in 3 main categories:

1- The widely prohibitted types of cruel acts towards animals, which are still legal in some countries (eg: bullfighting, shark-finning, zoophila etc.)

2- The acts of institutionalized tortures (eg: live mutilations in farming, vivisections in laboratories)

3- The massive crimes resulting in the over-exploitation and massive killing of animals (eg: factory farming for terrestrial and aquatic animals, wildlife hunting and trafficking etc). 

- In the short-term, we plan to ask for the most egregious and criminal acts of cruelty towards animals to be recognized as 'crimes against animality'.

To date, 2/3 of the world's countries have anti-cruelty laws recognizing that being cruel against animals is wrong and should be banned. But some of the worst cruel acts towards animals are still legal or authorized in some countries. If we take the previous examples, these are for instance: bullfighting, shark finning, zoophilia etc. These crimes are not only against animal dignity but against our human dignity too. For their extremely cruel or obscene character, we plan to obtain an international consensus to globally stop these practices in the few countries where they remain authorized.

- In the mid-term, we plan to ask that the institutionalized animal tortures become recognized as criminal as far as they can and should be avoided nowadays. We can mention the live mutilations daily practiced in factory farming (eg: piglets castration, dehorning cows, debeaking chickens and hens etc.) and other painful methods such as the forced-feeding of ducks and geese for foie-gras, the collection of bile from live bears in cages etc. And we can think of other sectors like the everyday vivisections of laboratory animals too. All these tortures should be globally ended, knowing that existing alternatives can be already used and developed to avoid inhumanely cruel acts to be perpetrated endlessly.

- In the longer-term, all the crimes that fall under the definition of “crimes against humanity” which can be applied to animals should be globally prohibitted by the law. 

By analogy with the definition of the “crimes against humanity” under the art. 7 of the Rome Statute, the "crimes against animality" refer to: the massive killings of animals; the extermination of wildlife populations and species; all forms of tortures (eg: live mutilations etc.), the sequestrations (eg: animals in cages, aquariums, piled into buildings or cramped captivity), the psychological, physical and sexual violences inlficted to animals (eg: separating mothers and babies, mistreating or hitting animals, forced-pregnacy, animals abuses), the deportation (eg: long transportation of animals in terrible conditions) etc.

WAJ stands that all these crimes should be considered very seriously by the international community and ultimately banned nationally, regionally and internationally. Why not just nationally? Because the trade of animals, either domestic or wild animals products is globalized. Because banning avoidable animal suffering in encouraging non-animal alternatives is a moral and should become a legal imperative. And because stopping the exponential trend of criminality towards animals is necessary to stop the worse forms of crimes in our society, if we still want to be considered truly 'humane' and civilized people.

Today, even in taking into account the existing disparities between countries, with more or less protective laws, no country is a perfect model for the protection of all sentient animals. All countries allow more or less the worst forms of crimes against animals to legally happen.

Such a change would be coherent with the scientific and legal recognition that animal are conscious and sentient beings, who should be protected against all forms of cruelty and avoidable suffering. Non-animal products and methods exist and are avalaible alternatives to animal products and methods.

The law should play its role to make the use of beneficial products and methods mandatory and to ban the use of harmful ones. Public and private subsidies and incentives should also be regulated in this sense.

• WHAT TO TACKLE IN PRORITY ?

Our food-systems need a susbtancial transformation from unsustainable farming to sustainable agriculture patterns. Notably, rich plant-based proteins are more healthy, ecological, sustainable and ethical, than animal proteins resulting from factory farming.

This change would save around 200 billions of animals per year victims of painful breeding conditions during their lives and at the time of slaughter, sometimes with long-transportation in terrfic conditions in between. Factory farming is also a main driver of pollutions, climate-change, biodiversity loss and zoonosis spillover. These are major global issues our world is facing, which are well-recognized by the United-Nations organization.

When the harmful subsidies promoting factory farms will be replaced by positive subsidies and incentives for sustainable agriculture, the face of the world will change for the best. Not only for the animals, but again for our 'humanity' (in all meanings) and our planet sake.

CONCLUSION

The massive and avoidable crimes perpetrated for so long against animals should now belong to the past. The law should protect animals who are not only sentient beings but also vulnerable victims. The common ground of animal law should find its global echo: animal welfare needs to be ensured and all forms of criminality need to be stopped.

Finally, I want to share a personal heartfelt message with all the animal advocates who dedicate their life to protect animals and who took the time to read this aticle until the end.

-> Every step we take to better protect animals is important. 

Sometimes, we can feel useless in front of the gigantic machinery of animal exploitation and suffering. But we are never useless. Noone is useless. No act is useless. No word is useless. Every animal's life is important and so we are. Every act, even small, is important.

Together, in uniting our strength, good ideas and brave convictions to better protect animals, we will continue to build this edifice and make it grow. One day, it will become the new path leading us to this world of justice for all, where animals are not left aside anymore.