By Josephine Götze and Marie Kolb, LLB students, University of Leipzig, Germany, josephine-goetze posteo.de, marie.kolb.m.k.mk gmail.com

This is part II of a two-part-series of blog posts highlighting the detrimental impacts of the exploitation of animals on human health. Part I utilises the One Health concept to demonstrate the core problems of the anthropocentric relationship with non-human animals. As such, it proposes that animal rights are necessary for the alleviation of those issues. Part II analyses the human right to health and how it supports the introduction of global animal rights.

Introduction

The human right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (“the right to health”) is established in multiple international legal instruments, e.g. in Art. 12 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Art. 24 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Art. 25 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the preamble of the (https://www.who.int/about/accountability/governance/constitution) Constitution of the WHO. It includes many key aspects ensuring the realization of this right,[1] like access to safe food and adequate nutrition, but also the prevention, treatment, and control of diseases.[2] To further highlight the importance of the human right to health, it is described as “indispensable for the exercise of other human rights”.[3] Part I of this series of blog posts discussed the problems associated with the exploitation of animals, and promoted global animal rights to improve human, animal and environmental health.[4] This second part of the blog post demonstrates that providing basic animal rights, such as the right to life, health, and liberty,[5] will help ending the unnecessary exploitation of animals, and can hence foster the fulfillment of the right to health which helps alleviating these problems.

The right to health as a “merely” human right

The international human rights framework that currently exists appears to follow an anthropocentric approach, granting fundamental rights only to “members of the human family” as these rights “derive from the inherent dignity of the human person”.[6] This recognition and implementation of universal rights was and remains a milestone in human history. However, from a modern and less speciesist point of view and a One Health perspective, this wording might not be sufficiently progressive as it fails to address major threats to human health. This could be a consequence of the anthropocentric relationship humans have with animals and the environment.

The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), in its General Comment No. 14 on the right to health, mentions animals only once in a section that deals with the special protection of indigenous people.[7] There, it is acknowledged that animals are necessary for this particular group to reach the full enjoyment of health due to their symbiotic relationship with their lands. Yet, this exclusive approach ignores the interconnectedness between the health of humans, animals, and the environment as highlighted by the One Health concept.

Animal rights: enhancing the human right to health

The right to health includes a right to prevention, treatment, and control of diseases.[8] States are, therefore, obliged to implement effective disease control measures.[9] This includes an obligation to prevent zoonoses caused by farmed animals as well as wild animals carrying pathogens which can spread to humans as they interfere with the animals. Moreover, States should combat AMR which is responsible for and contributes to millions of deaths globally every year. The mis- and overuse of antimicrobial medicines in animals contributes to this major risk factor for a global health crisis.

The human right to health also includes a right to a healthy natural environment, which has recently been re-emphasized in the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment No. 26 on children’s rights and the environment, with a special focus on climate change.[10] States must prevent the exposure of humans to environmental conditions harmful to their health such as GHGs.[11] By abolishing industrial farming, States would considerably decrease those emissions.

Furthermore, the access to safe food and adequate nutrition is protected under the human right to health.[12] Shifting to a plant-based food system is more sustainable than the consumption of animal products which have detrimental impacts on the environment, and it would adequately feed humankind in a safe manner.[13]

General Comment No. 14 stipulates that one step towards realizing the right to health is the adoption of specific legal instruments.[14] The exploitation of animals is detrimental for both the environment and human health and must therefore be addressed by States in their efforts to realizing the right to health. An effective global animal rights regime would inter alia put a halt to factory farming which is not only causing the inhumane suffering of countless animals, but also contributes to the major threats to human health discussed above.

One new approach that is based on the One Health concept and which recognizes the interdependence of living beings is called “One Rights”.[15] It proposes that human rights – in a broader sense – entail animal rights and that animals can form a new group of rights-holders within a human rights framework.[16] This idea might raise the general objection that a broadening of the human rights scope would eventually lead to less protection for humans.[17] It has been argued that the opposite is the case: equipping animals with rights acknowledges that they are a vulnerable group of sentient beings without trivialising the importance of human rights.[18] In fact, this should even lead to enhanced health standards for animals and humans alike in accordance with the One Health concept which is in line with the realisation of the human right to health. Under the “One Rights” approach, it is acknowledged that so far, animal rights are only candidates for legal recognition.[19] Since animals are not recognized as (human-)rights-holders and therefore do not derive direct legal protection from any legal framework such as international human rights, they need a separate framework providing legal protection.

Animal rights: protecting a vulnerable group

Just like human vulnerable groups, animals as sentient beings have interests and needs which must be protected by law.[20] It is widely accepted that the arbitrary abuse of animals is not acceptable from an ethical standpoint which became the basis for existing animal welfare laws.[21] Children and women were first protected for moral reasons as well, and only decades later, a change in perception took place, leading to the protection of those vulnerable groups as “victims for their own sake”.[22] Rather than maintaining an anthropocentric approach and protecting animals for moral reasons,[23] they should be granted rights because they are a vulnerable group. For such a framework of global animal rights, the CRC could serve as a model, as it provides the protected group with legal rights but does not impose any legal duties.

Unlike children, animals do not have legal guardians to act on their behalf when their rights are violated. The proposal of giving animals their own rights is often met with the ironical question if this will lead to animals appearing before court. As the human legal system is not suited for cases concerning the rights of other species, animals need to be legally represented by humans to defend their rights. In the past, there have already been legislative and judicial proceedings where elephants, (https://animal.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/Final-Judgment-Estrellita-w-Translation-Certification.pdf) other animals and even rivers were granted legal personality and rights, with humans acting on behalf of their non-human “clients”. The non-governmental civil rights organization Nonhuman Rights Project from the US is one example of dedicated lawyers fighting for animals’ rights through litigation and other means. If global animal rights were recognized and implemented, States could introduce international treaty bodies observing and securing the protection of animal rights, and establish national organizations that legally represent the new rights-holders.

Conclusion

As part I of this blog post series demonstrated, the implementation of animal rights is necessary to combat current threats to human health caused by human exploitation of animals. Humans have a fundamental interest in the protection of animals – not only for moral, but also for health reasons. Rather than curtailing the rights of humans, the introduction of animal rights would support humankind in reaching the highest attainable level of health. The human right to health obliges States to, inter alia, aim for a healthy environment and prevent the spread of diseases. From a One Health perspective, the enhancement of animal health by introducing animal rights helps to achieve these goals. Recent events have led to alarming consequences for humans, animals, and our environment alike: the world suffered from a pandemic, humans and animals around the globe are affected by global warming to which GHGs contribute enormously, AMR impedes the medical treatment of diseases, and the consumption of animal products causes severe health problems for humans.[24] It is past time for radical change.

[1] Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), Right to Health, (General Comment no 14 2000).
[2] United Nations Human Rights Office to the High Commissioner (OHCHR), World Health Organization (WHO), The Right to Health (Fact Sheet No. 31 2008) 3.
[3] CESCR (n1) [1].
[4] We will refer to non-human animals as “animals” and use the term “humans” to refer to human animals.
[5] Saskia Stucki, One Rights: Human and Animal Rights in the Anthropocene (Springer 2023), 10.
[6] International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (adopted in 1966, entered into force in 1976) 993 UNTS 3 (ICESCR), preamble.
[7] CESCR (n1) [27].
[8] OHCHR, WHO (n2) 3.
[9] CESCR (n1) [16].
[10] ICESCR (n6) Art. 12.2 (b), 12 2 (c); CESCR (n1) [15-16]; Committee on the Rights of the Child, Convention on the Rights of the Child, (General Comment no 26 2023) [37, 63].
[11] CESCR (n1) [15].
[12] OHCHR, WHO (n2) 3.
[13] J. Poore, T. Nemecek, ‘Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers’ (2018) 360 Science 6392, 987.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Saskia Stucki, Tom Sparks, ‘The Elephant in the (Court)Room: Interdependence of Human and Animal Rights in the Anthropocene’ (2020) EJIL:Talk! <https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-elephant-in-the-courtroom-interdependence-of-human-and-animal-rights-in-the-anthropocene/> accessed 9 April 2024.
[16] Stucki (n5) 12-14.
[17] Mary Ann Glendon, Rights Talk: the Impoverishment of Political Discourse (Free Press 1991), xi; Michael Ignatieff, ‘Human Rights as Idolatry’ in Amy Gutmann (ed), Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (Princeton University Press 2001), 53-98, 90; Anne Peters, ‘Liberté, Égalité, Animalité: Human-Animal Comparisons in Law’ (2016) 1 Transnational Environmental Law 5, 25-53, 35-36.
[18] Peters (n17) 35-36.
[19] Kerstin von der Decken, Nikolaus Koch, ‘Recognition of New Human Rights’ in Andreas von Arnauld, et al. (eds), Cambridge Handbook of New Human Rights: Recognition, Novelty, Rhetoric, (Cambridge University Press 2020), 7-20, 8; Stucki (n5) 12.
[20] Laurie Sellars, et al., ‘One Health, COVID-19, and a Right to Health for Human and Nonhuman Animals’ (2021) 2 Health and Human Rights Journal 23, 35-47, 37.
[21] Peters (n17) 40-41.
[22] Peters (n17) 41-42.
[23] Thomas G. Kelch, ‘A Short History of (Mostly) Western Animal Law: Part II’ (2013) 19 Animal Law Review, 347-390, 369.
[24] Neil D Barnard, Frédéric Leroy, ‘Children and Adults Should Avoid Consuming Animal Products to Reduce Risk for Chronic Disease: YES’ (2020) 4 The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 112, 926-930.