Political Conceptions of Human and Animal Rights: Principled and Prudential Reasons

Abstract

The preceding chapter has argued that animals could have (some) human rights. Granted that the proposition of human rights for animals is conceptually plausible on naturalistic grounds, the question remains whether it is politically desirable on practical grounds. Would the inclusion of animals under the human rights framework be a good thing? Through the lens of political conceptions, this chapter explores a range of practical reasons why animals should be afforded human rights. I will argue that the extension of human rights to animals is warranted both for principled or ethical reasons (as a matter of justice for animals) and for prudential or instrumental reasons (as a means of better safeguarding human rights). In short, human rights are good for animals and animal rights are good for humans.

The emancipation of men will bring with it another and still wider emancipation – of animals. Salt (1894), p. 94.

The preceding chapter has argued that animals could have (some) human rights. Granted that the proposition of human rights for animals is conceptually plausible on naturalistic grounds, the question remains whether it is politically desirable on practical grounds. Would the inclusion of animals under the human rights framework be a good thing? Through the lens of political conceptions, this chapter explores a range of practical reasons why animals should be afforded human rights. I will argue that the extension of human rights to animals is warranted both for principled or ethical reasons (as a matter of justice for animals) and for prudential or instrumental reasons (as a means of better safeguarding human rights). In short, human rights are good for animals and animal rights are good for humans.

3.1 Human Rights Denaturalized: Constructing Rights on Practical Grounds

Almost 30 years ago, Richard Rorty proclaimed that ‘human rights foundationalism is outmoded’.¹ Today, political conceptions of human rights are the main challenger to the orthodoxy of naturalistic conceptions.² In sharp contrast to the latter, political accounts refrain from relying on metaphysical and ahistorical assumptions about an abstract and intransient human nature as the philosophical foundation for human rights.³ Paradigmatically, Morton Winston states that the belief in universal human rights does not need a justification based on ‘speculative philosophical conceptions of human nature’—a pragmatic justification will do.⁴ Such ‘alternative justificatory strategies’ give practical reasons as to why a society should adopt and respect human rights.⁵ Under the political conception, human rights are ‘the product of human civilization and not nature’,⁶ and emerge from and evolve with social practice.⁷ Political, practical, or functionalist accounts thus understand human rights in terms of their institutional and practical functions, considered in their concrete historical and socio-political context.

In a narrow sense, political conceptions such as the ones advanced by John Rawls,⁸ Charles Beitz,⁹ and Joseph Raz¹⁰ explain human rights in terms of their role or function in international political practice.¹¹ Human rights are a class of norms that express minimum standards of treatment for individuals to which political communities can be held, and whose breach is a matter of international concern and may legitimize sovereignty-limiting measures, such as interventions in case of systematic human rights violations.¹² For present purposes, political conceptions in this narrow sense will not be explored further, as they do not seem immediately relevant to the animal question. While there is some evidence to suggest that the protection of animals is emerging as an international concern¹³ and that animal interests may sometimes function as ‘triggers for international interventionʼ,¹⁴ there is at present no sufficient state practice to validate the notion of animal rights as limits to state sovereignty.¹⁵

In a broader sense, political or practical conceptions of human rights encompass a range of historical, functionalist, constructivist, or experiential approaches and perspectives. Human rights are understood as a historically contingent and socially constructed normative paradigm that serves some important practical function, informed by past or present political needs and misdeeds.¹⁶ According to the dominant narrative, human rights have emerged, consolidated, and expanded as political reactions to concrete experiences of suffering, violence, injustice, discrimination, oppression, slavery, genocides, and the horrors of two World Wars.¹⁷ As Alan Dershowitz succinctly puts it, ‘rights come from wrongs’. On his ‘experiential approach’, rights are an ‘experiential reaction to wrongs’ and constructed from historical experiences of injustice.¹⁸ Morton Winston describes human rights as ‘normative responses to experiences of oppression’ that are ‘designed to prevent and ameliorate systematic or institutionalized forms of oppression.’¹⁹ Conor Gearty submits that human rights serve the ‘meta-idea’ of protecting the politically weak and vulnerable, and function as an ‘emancipatory force against the abuse of power’.²⁰ Even more pragmatically, Michael Ignatieff asserts that while people may disagree about why we have human rights, they can agree that we need them: ‘All that can be said about human rights is that they are necessary to protect individuals from violence and abuse, and if it is asked why, the only possible answer is historical.’²¹ Human rights so denaturalized and politicized are thus stripped of their ‘layers of philosophical and legal mystification’,²² and understood not as some innate quality that humans are magically born with, but as institutional responses to very real problems.

In this broader sense, political conceptions provide fertile grounds for fathoming the functionality of animal rights as new human rights. Political justifications of animal rights must advance practical or functional reasons why animals ought to have human rights. The following sections will explore two sets of practical reasons for animal rights: principled and prudential ones. The principled argument is that animals should have human rights for intrinsic reasons, to better protect them from violence, oppression, and exploitation. The prudential argument is that animal rights also serve the indirect function of better protecting the rights of humans, and are thus desirable even for purely instrumental, human rights-internal reasons.

3.2 The Principled Argument: Human Rights Are Good for Animals…

The principled argument for animal rights is primarily an ethical one. The core of it is that morality or justice²³ demands fundamental rights for animals, in order to address and alleviate the suffering, violence, oppression, extermination, and other injustices that animals experience in human societies. Over the past decades, variations of the justice-based case for animal rights have been formulated in moral, political, and legal philosophy.²⁴ Here, I will not delve into the moral reasoning whether and why animals deserve human rights, but instead focus on some of the practical reasons why animals might need them.²⁵ I will first outline the experiential backdrop that renders animals in need of the emancipatory resource of human rights, and then look at the (immediate) discursive, (eventual) institutional, and (long-term) transformative functions that human rights may serve for animals.

3.2.1 Human Rights as (Shared) Normative Resource against (Shared) Experiences of Injustice

Old human rights have emerged, and new human rights continue to emerge, as normative responses to entrenched or newly recognized forms of injustice. Our treatment and mass victimization of animals is increasingly perceived as ‘one of the worst crimes in history’²⁶ and ‘one of the great injustices of our time’.²⁷ Indeed, the human-animal relationship features some of the very themes of suffering, oppression, domination, and extermination that have operated as catalysts for the formation of human rights. Notably, animals experience widespread suffering and death,²⁸ institutionalized violence,²⁹ discrimination,³⁰ ‘ubiquitous domination and oppression’,³¹ and zoocide (a ‘genocide’ on species)³² at the hands of humans. Moreover, some argue that our systematic exploitation³³ of animals is akin to slavery;³⁴ that the systematic violence deployed against animals constitutes (literally or metaphorically) a war against animals;³⁵ and that the treatment of animals in factory farms may be comparable to concentration camps.³⁶ In short, the human-animal relationship is rife with atrocities that parallel many of the phenomena of injustice that have provided the experiential backdrop of human rights.³⁷

Given that the animal experience in many respects maps onto the human rights-generative experiential basis, it stands to reason that these shared experiences of injustice may warrant a shared normative response in the form of human rights. Human and animal rights are both informed by a background of historical and enduring experiences of suffering and injustice, and are driven by the political goal of ending the respective forms of oppression and social injustice.³⁸ Human rights have come to be ‘the principle of liberation from oppression and domination’,³⁹ and could very well grow into a political resource to address not only human but also animal injustice.⁴⁰ It must be conceded, though, that unlike (most) humans, animals are unable to fight their own emancipatory battles. While animals may certainly commit individual acts of physical resistance against human aggressors,⁴¹ they are not equipped to collectively act and organize resistance in the political arena.⁴² Animals must therefore rely on human advocates to vindicate their best interests and rights vis-à-vis the political community. This element of paternalism—or solidarity⁴³—is however not extraneous to the logic of human rights, whose ‘power-taming’⁴⁴ function it is precisely to protect not just the power- and resourceful, but (perhaps even more so) the disempowered, vulnerable, and disenfranchised members of society.⁴⁵ This is not only true for children and humans with mental disabilities, who depend on individual guardians and political representatives to defend their human rights. It is more generally in the nature of systematic oppression that its (human) victims are ‘essentially unable to rescue themselves’ and experience a ‘relative powerlessness … to alter their situation through self-help alone’.⁴⁶ Anti-oppressive human rights are thus, to a greater or lesser extent, predicated on political solidarity and assistance by the non-oppressed and enfranchised. In this sense, human rights for animals need not necessarily be about self-emancipation, but rather, can function as a political ‘vehicle for emancipation’.⁴⁷

The overarching political goal of animal rights is to overcome the present societal conditions of institutionalized and oppressive violence against animals, and to advance the meta-idea of justice for animals. To this end, framing animal rights as new human rights can serve different practical functions of a short-term (discursive), medium-term (institutional), and long-term (transformative) nature.

3.2.2 Discursive and Rhetorical Function

As was noted before, the gestation process of new human rights is a lengthy one.⁴⁸ Animal rights have passed the stage of intellectual conception and are currently in the emergence phase, awaiting broader institutional recognition. In this pre-institutional phase, the rhetoric of human rights plays an important role in social, political, and legal fora.⁴⁹ Indeed, using the language of human rights for animals is not altogether different from other new human rights claims, which are generally triggered by an inadequate status quo and serve a number of rhetorical functions on the path to eventual institutionalization.

New human rights claims have an ‘appellative’ or spotlighting function that draws attention to a hitherto unrecognized injustice or some existing state of inadequate protection for an important social value or vulnerable group.⁵⁰ The current state of animal protection—this much is agreed upon by all animal rights advocates—is painfully inadequate.⁵¹ The (perceived) failure of existing animal welfare laws acts as a key political motive for transforming animals’ real experiences of injustice into normative claims to human rights. Given the ʻcolossal appeal’ of human rights to confront ‘intense oppression or great miseryʼ,⁵² it seems only natural for animal advocates to look to human rights discourse. Florian Hoffmann characterizes human rights as ‘a plural, polycentric, and ultimately indeterminate discourse amenable to use by everyone nearly everywhere. Wherever individuals and groups wish to challenge what they perceive as oppressive or hegemonic structures, they can avail themselves of that discourse’.⁵³ Human rights may thus be understood as a kind of open source instrument that can be used by social justice movements, such as the animal rights movement,⁵⁴ for the political purpose of challenging, addressing, and ultimately ending the identified injustice. Such is the mobilizing, contesting, and recognitional (or ‘connecting’) function of new human rights claims: they provide social movements with a powerful language for the ‘contestation of an unjust status quo’, the organization of opposition, and mobilization of societal support.⁵⁵

Overall, new human rights claims are thus powerful ‘challenges to the status quo’ and its institutional arrangements, and offer a rhetorically potent instrument in the service of bringing about political and legal change.⁵⁶ Yet, for human rights claims to change realities, authoritative actors and institutions must recognize them.⁵⁷ Perhaps most importantly, then, the language of human rights serves a jurisgenerative function⁵⁸ and generates pressure for eventual institutionalization. As Regina Kreide notes, human rights claims do not only ‘trigger processes of reflection about injustices but also give rise to expectations and “performance pressure” on the part of states’, for example, to translate moral rights to legal rights.⁵⁹ Such is generally the function of moral rights claims as ‘demand for new legal rights’⁶⁰—what has been variously described as ‘ought to be legal rights’,⁶¹ ‘manifesto’ rights or ‘ideal rights’.⁶² In this way, new human rights claims can serve as a ‘bridge between morality and law’.⁶³

3.2.3 Institutional and Universalizing Function

Institutionalization marks the transition from merely moral rights (claims) to legally recognized rights. Human rights are generally considered to be of a dual, moral and legal nature, and best understood as a ‘legally recognized and enforceable subset of universal moral rights.’⁶⁴ As moral rights, human rights exist regardless of whether they are recognized, codified, respected, or enforced by law.⁶⁵ But human rights are also of an ‘inherently legal nature’⁶⁶ and positivized in a canon of international and constitutional human rights law.⁶⁷ This process of positivization, juridification, or legalization⁶⁸ is important also for animal rights, because translating suprapositive rights into institutional contexts contributes to making the protection of animals more robust and effective.⁶⁹ Merely moral animal rights are not able to set the kind of ‘real and substantial obstacles’⁷⁰ against institutionalized forms of injustice that human rights are expected to set. As Martha Nussbaum has aptly noted, ‘No major crimes against sentient beings have been curbed by ethics alone, without the coercive force of law’.⁷¹ Indeed, institutionalization constitutes the very essence of political conceptions of human rights, as ‘rights which are to be given institutional recognition, rights which transcend private morality.’⁷²

The legal institution of human rights protects fundamental interests that are ‘typically threatened by the state’,⁷³ and its main addressees are thus public institutions.⁷⁴ At present, states are heavily implicated in systematic (moral) animal rights violations, either by inflicting or facilitating collectively organized violence against animals.⁷⁵ The act of institutionalization would place states under a duty to respect, protect, and fulfil (legal) animal rights.⁷⁶ With regard to the duty to respect, an important function of legal animal rights would be to raise the burden of justification for infringements.⁷⁷ Whereas today, animals’ fundamental interests are regularly overridden by inferior or even trivial human interests, interfering with fundamental animal rights would trigger more stringent justification requirements based on established principles of human rights adjudication. This would, first, limit the sorts of considerations that constitute a legitimate aim which can be balanced against fundamental animal rights. Furthermore, the balancing process must encompass a strict proportionality analysis, comprised of the elements of suitability, necessity and proportionality stricto sensu, which would preclude the bulk of the sorts of low-level justifications that are currently sufficient.⁷⁸ This heightened threshold for justifiable infringements, in turn, translates to a lower infringeability of fundamental animal rights and an increased immunisation of animals’ prima facie protected interests against being overridden by conflicting considerations and interests of lesser importance.

While public actors frequently engage in animal rights violations, Anne Peters rightly notes that ‘the most important direct abusers of animals are private actors … However, behind those private actors stands the regulation (or the regulatory failure) of states.’⁷⁹ Importantly, then, legal animal rights would impose on the state a duty to protect—a systemic responsibility to create and implement a legal system that protects animal rights also against private transgressions, through proper legislation and enforcement.⁸⁰ As Peters puts it, ‘animal rights should be modelled on fundamental human rights, directed against the state, but unfolding appropriate “horizontal” effects against private actors.’⁸¹ In this vein, the Constitutional Court of Ecuador held that the animal right to life comprises two dimensions: a negative one, through which the state is prohibited from infringing on animal life, and a positive one, through which public authorities are obliged to establish a system of rules that protect animal life against aggression regardless of their public or private origin.⁸²

The Ecuadorian Constitutional Court further alluded to the state’s duty to fulfil, when noting that the right to free development of animal behaviour includes not just the negative duty of the state or any other person not to interfere, impede, or hinder free development, but also the positive obligation of the state to promote and ensure the development of free animal behaviour.⁸³ The duty to fulfil generally describes the positive obligations of states to assist and provide the right-holders with access to the objects of their rights.⁸⁴ This means that formal legal recognition should successively lead to the substantive realization of animal rights.

Lastly, recognizing and institutionalizing animal rights as new human rights would also imply their (eventual) universalization.⁸⁵ Indeed, Anne Peters points out that animal rights ‘need to be universalized in order to have an effect in a globalized setting.’⁸⁶ Against the backdrop of the ‘globalization of animal crueltyʼ⁸⁷ and the transnational nature of animal exploitation,⁸⁸ human rights universalism offers a suitable conceptual framework for unfolding the basic, non-relational rights of all animals on a global scale, irrespective of an animal’s particular circumstances, geographical background, or species. International animal rights could serve as a benchmark against which to measure, criticize, and develop domestic law that fails to satisfy international standards.⁸⁹ And while universalized animal rights, like human rights universalism, may attract the criticism of cultural imperialism, Costas Douzinas reminds us that ‘Too often respect for cultural differences, a necessary corrective for the arrogance of universalism, has turned into a shield protecting appalling local practices.’⁹⁰

3.2.4 Aspirational and Transformative Function

Formal legal recognition marks but a starting point—rather than the endpoint—for the realization of human and animal rights.⁹¹ Once institutionalization has occurred, the long-term work in progress is to translate the moral ideals expressed in legal rights to real change. Respecting, protecting, and fulfilling animals’ most fundamental rights would inevitably require far-ranging changes in our treatment of animals, and would ultimately rule out ‘virtually all existing practices of the animal-use industries’.⁹² Considering how deeply animal exploitation is woven into the economic and cultural fabric of contemporary societies, and how pervasive violence against animals is on both an individual and a collective level, the idea of recognizing—let alone enforcing—animal rights may therefore appear far removed from social reality.⁹³ This chasm between normative ideals and the deeply imperfect realities they collide with—or what Jack Donnelly calls the ‘possession paradox’ (‘“having” and “not having” a right at the same time’)⁹⁴—is however not a problem unique to fundamental animal rights. Rather, the idea of human rights is generally of an evolutionary and aspirational nature.⁹⁵ As Philip Harvey submits, virtually all human rights claims, when first formally recognized, were mere aspirations with little correspondence to reality. Moreover, human rights must always remain aspirational to some degree, in that they constantly expand and raise the bar for the to-be-achieved (yet presently unattainable) goals.⁹⁶ Human rights are thus ‘a form of aspirational law’ through which humans set goals for themselves concerning ‘the kinds of societies they are committed to creating’.⁹⁷ Or as Patricia Williams puts it, ‘rights are to law what conscious commitments are to the psyche’.⁹⁸ Aspirational rights express commitments to ideals that, even if they may not be fully realisable at the time of their formal recognition, act as a continuous reminder and impulse that stimulates social and legal change towards more expansive implementation.

This provides a useful lens for thinking about the aspirational nature and transformative function of fundamental animal rights. Surely, the mere formal recognition of fundamental animal rights will not, by any realistic measure, bring about an instant practical achievement of the ultimate goal of ‘abolishing exploitation and liberating animals from enslavement’.⁹⁹ Take, for example, the right to life. Respecting and protecting animal life would (at least in industrialised societies) preclude most forms of killing animals for food, and would thus certainly conflict with the entrenched practice of eating meat. Yet, while the current social normality of eating animals may make an immediate prohibition of meat production and consumption unrealistic, this is also precisely the reason why animals need a right to life (i.e., a right not to be eaten), as fundamental rights help to denormalize accepted social practices and to establish, internalize, and habituate normative boundaries.¹⁰⁰ David Bilchitz proposes the established concept of ‘progressive realisation’ (originally developed in the context of socio-economic human rights) as a useful legal framework for the gradual implementation of animal rights. Accordingly, each fundamental animal right could be seen as comprising a minimum core that has to be ensured immediately, coupled with a general prohibition of retrogressive measures and an obligation to progressively move towards a fuller realisation.¹⁰¹

To be sure, achieving the full recognition and realization of animal rights will be a long, gradual, and perpetual process.¹⁰² Although fundamental animal rights may currently not be fully realisable, the very act of introducing them into law and committing to them as normative ideals places animals on the political map and provides a powerful basis from which to address and alleviate the injustice suffered by animals in current societies. In this way, institutionalized animal rights can function as legal infrastructure for moving from an imperfect and unjust status quo towards more ideal societal conditions in which animal rights can be respected and protected.¹⁰³

3.3 … and Animal Rights Are Good for Humans: The Prudential Argument

The justice-based case for animal rights, on its own, will likely not convince the humanist sceptic. Granted, human rights may be good for animals—but are animal rights good for humans? While the principled argument for animal rights relies on practical reasons why animals stand to benefit from receiving human rights, the prudential argument must proffer compelling reasons why humans stand to benefit from giving human rights to animals. Prudential reasons for animal rights are such that can be arrived at from a purely instrumental, human rights-internal logic, insofar as animal rights simultaneously serve the indirect function of strengthening human rights protection. Indeed, the prudential argument submits that human rights may function better in tandem with animal rights, and that ignoring animal rights will end up undermining human rights.

3.3.1 Antagonistic and Synergistic Assumptions

The general intuition, especially among human rights scholars, is that human rights best remain an exclusive ‘humans only’ club, if only for practical reasons, because recognizing animal rights would have negative effects on humans.¹⁰⁴ The common concern that animal rights are bad for human rights takes different forms. Some scholars generally caution against an excessive proliferation of rights, as it risks trivializing the institution and eroding the currency of human rights.¹⁰⁵ Others fear that admitting animals into the fundamental rights club would be a slippery slope, and level down the normative status of humans.¹⁰⁶ For example, Richard Posner advocates for keeping a strict dividing line between humans and animals, lest ‘we may end up treating human beings as badly as we treat animals, rather than treating animals as well as we treat (or aspire to treat) human beings.’¹⁰⁷ In a similar vein, Richard Cupp projects that ‘Rather than only seeing animals’ rights status rise, we should expect also to see humans’ rights status to fall, with human rights and animal rights meeting somewhere in the middle.’¹⁰⁸ Will Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson have further observed a ‘distinctively Left motivation for resisting animal rights’, namely the concern that they will harm ‘the struggles of other disadvantaged groups.’¹⁰⁹ All of these objections rest on the (oftentimes implicit) assumption that the human rights project is predicated on a special, and elevated, human status—the hallmark of human exceptionalism. The bottom line of the antagonistic intuition is the expectation that animal rights would somehow undermine human rights, and that the ongoing exclusion of animals is therefore a necessary evil to the higher goal of safeguarding human rights.

Although these are important concerns that warrant serious consideration, I take the assumption of a principally antagonistic relationship between human and animal rights to be problematic and mistaken. The antagonistic assumption speculates about potential negative effects that may or may not actualize. Certainly, some old human rights would be incompatible with fundamental animal rights and would need to be retired, such as the right to injure and kill animals for culinary pleasure or entertainment. Suchlike entitlements to and powers over another’s body might, however, be considered ‘illegitimate rights’ in the first place (as was historically the case with slave-owners’ rights).¹¹⁰ This is not to say that legitimate rights conflicts would not inevitably occur, for example, between equivalent human and animal interests to life, health, or habitat. To deal with these concrete rights conflicts, appropriate legal mechanisms will have to be developed, along the lines of the proportionality and balancing requirements guiding human rights adjudication.¹¹¹ But on a more abstract level, it is unclear why respect for animal rights would generally and necessarily be harmful to, and diminish respect for, human rights.¹¹² Animal rights advocates consistently emphasize that rather than devaluing humans, animal rights would simply upvalue animals and may even result in more respect for human rights.¹¹³ For example, Anne Peters asserts that ‘upgrading the cause of animals in no way inevitably downgrades concern for humans … In theory, both agendas can go hand in hand. In practice, they normally do so.ʼ¹¹⁴

Moreover, we may just as well assume that animal and human rights have an overall synergistic and mutually beneficial relationship, and consider the potential positive effects of this alliance.¹¹⁵ Rather than undermining them, animal rights may actually bolster our commitment to human rights. In this vein, Helena Silverstein argues that affirming animal rights strengthens human rights in several ways: it reaffirms the rights of non-paradigmatic humans, reinforces the notion that ‘arbitrary demarcations, including those that justify racism, sexism, and other “isms,” are inappropriate’, and champions the values of sentience and empathy.¹¹⁶ We may call this the synergistic approach, one that ‘reaffirms human rights and concomitantly advances animal rights.’¹¹⁷ The core of the synergistic argument is that because, and to the extent that, the social or natural conditions that threaten human and animal rights are intertwined, so should be the normative responses—interrelated problems call for interrelated solutions.¹¹⁸ Put differently, in light of their social and natural interconnectedness, disrespecting animal rights is likely to harm human rights, and respect for animal rights is likely to benefit human rights.

While both the antagonistic and synergistic assumption ultimately remain speculative—one about potential harmful effects, the other about potential positive effects—there are a number of compelling reasons to think that human and animal rights are mutually reinforcing and beneficial in important respects. In the following, I will look at two prudential reasons in particular—one of a socio-political and one of an eco-political nature—that should incline us to adopt a synergistic understanding. The first reason why we should understand human and animal rights as interdependent is that the underlying rights-generative phenomena of social injustice are interconnected and can fully be addressed only jointly. The second reason is that institutionalized animal exploitation feeds into and exacerbates a range of (anthropogenic) environmental problems—such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and zoonotic diseases—that pose some of the gravest existential threats to human rights.

3.3.2 Interconnections Between (Human and Animal) Rights-Generative Phenomena of Social Injustice

One of the key practical goals of human rights is to eliminate or alleviate ‘the major forms of institutionalized oppression’¹¹⁹ and other forms of social injustice experienced by humans around the world. According to the synergistic argument, human rights may be better equipped to fulfil this function by integrating and simultaneously tending to animal rights. This is because many of the human rights-generative phenomena of social injustice appear to be interlinked with those underlying animal rights. That is, social injustice against animals in many ways interacts with, amplifies, and serves to justify injustices towards other humans, and thus works to undermine the emancipatory mandate of human rights.

3.3.2.1 Intersections Between Human and Animal Social Justice Movements

Since the late eighteenth century, we can find numerous instances of intellectual and practical interconnections between human and animal social justice movements, demonstrating a lived political alliance.¹²⁰ Historical links of animal rights exist, for example, with abolitionist, pacifist, humanitarian, and socialist values. As Conor Gearty notes, the ‘move towards compassion for animals … was not very different in sentiment from the feelings which produced the anti-slavery and humanitarian movements of the same period.’¹²¹

For example, the philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) compared the injustice of animals’ treatment with that of slaves:

The day has been … in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing as … the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come, when the rest of animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of human tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate? … the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?¹²²

The social reformer and humanitarian Henry Stephens Salt (1851–1939) was one of the founders of the Humanitarian League, a ‘radical pressure group’ that espoused both human and animal rights and campaigned against corporal and capital punishment, sports hunting, and vivisection.¹²³ Salt also authored one of the earliest and most comprehensive treatises on animal rights, which he related to human rights and social progress:

If “rights” exist at all … they cannot be consistently awarded to men and denied to animals, since the same sense of justice and compassion apply in both cases … It is an entire mistake to suppose that the rights of animals are in any way antagonistic to the rights of men. Let us not be betrayed for a moment into the specious fallacy that we must study human rights first, and leave the animal question to solve itself hereafter; for it is only by a wide and disinterested study of both subjects that a solution of either is possible.¹²⁴

The philosopher and socialist Leonard Nelson (1882–1927)—who founded the Militant Socialist International (Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund), which was part of the resistance against German National Socialism—also wrote about animal rights in his work.¹²⁵ He connected the emancipatory labour movement and class struggle with the exploitation of animals and vegetarianism:

A labourer who does not just want to be a ‘prevented capitalist’ and who is thus serious about the fight against all exploitation, does not bow to the nefarious habit of exploiting harmless animals and does not take part in the everyday murder of millions of animals, whose cruelty, barbarity, and cowardice dwarfs the horrors of the world war.¹²⁶

Perhaps the strongest historical link of animal rights is with the women’s rights movement.¹²⁷ Numerous women’s suffrage campaigners simultaneously advocated against animal cruelty. For example, Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904)—a social reformer, suffragette, and founder of several animal advocacy groups (such as the National Anti-Vivisection Society)—was (in)famous both for her women’s rights and animal rights activism. These nineteenth century connections between feminism and animal causes were ‘precursors of a generation yet to come’—ecofeminists.¹²⁸ According to Greta Gaard, one of the mothers of ecofeminism,

Ecofeminism is a theory that has evolved from various fields of feminist inquiry and activism: peace movements, labor movements, women’s health care, and the anti-nuclear, environmental, and animal liberation movements. Drawing on the insights of ecology, feminism, and socialism, ecofeminism’s basic premise is that the ideology which authorizes oppressions such as those based on race, class, gender, sexuality, physical abilities, and species is the same ideology which sanctions the oppression of nature. Ecofeminism calls for an end to all oppressions … Its theoretical base is a sense of self … that is interconnected with all life.¹²⁹

Core to ecofeminism is an understanding of the interlocking oppression of animals, women (whose inferiority has historically been constructed by likening them to animals), and other marginalized humans.¹³⁰ This interconnectedness of human and animal oppression is also a key theme in Critical Animal Studies, whose intersectional social justice approach seeks to achieve both human and animal liberation.¹³¹ In political practice, the interlinkage of social justice for humans and animals finds its clearest expression in the ‘One Struggle’¹³² slogan frequently promulgated by the animal rights movement: ‘“one struggle” against all forms of domination’, and ‘one struggle against exploitation’.¹³³

Although much of intellectual and practical human rights work since the Enlightenment has been marked by human exceptionalism and the devaluation and exclusion of animals, there are many counterexamples of lived political interconnections between human and animal rights. While these examples are merely anecdotal, the underlying sentiment—that human and animal social (in)justice are interrelated—is increasingly corroborated by scientific research on the socio-psychological nexus between prejudicial attitudes against (marginalized) humans and animals, individual violence against (vulnerable) humans and animals, and collective violence against (animalized) humans and animals.

3.3.2.2 Sexism, Racism, Speciesism: The Correlation Between Prejudicial Attitudes Against (Marginalized) Humans and Animals

Human rights seek to eliminate deeply rooted forms of discrimination against humans based on their sex, ethnicity, nationality, cultural or religious background, sexual orientation, etc. The prudential argument for animal rights draws on an observed correlation between discriminatory attitudes towards human outgroups and speciesist attitudes,¹³⁴ suggesting an ‘important link between one’s disposition toward human and nonhuman animals’.¹³⁵ Research from social psychology indicates that prejudicial attitudes (such as sexism and racism) towards marginalized humans are generally associated with, and fostered by, prejudicial attitudes towards animals (speciesism).¹³⁶ Studies have also shown that ‘endorsing speciesist attitudes is significantly and positively associated with negative attitudes toward ethnic outgroups’¹³⁷ and sexism,¹³⁸ and that people who eat meat show a stronger predisposition to prejudicial tendencies, authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation (as compared to vegetarians and vegans).¹³⁹ That is, many of the psychological factors – such as power, dominance, and control—underlying the speciesist mindset also ‘serve to reinforce and promote prejudice against humans.’¹⁴⁰ According to the Interspecies Model of Prejudice, this correlation can be explained by the exceptionalist belief in a human-animal divide, which sets the foundation for hierarchical thinking about animals and human outgroups (marginalized ‘others’ that are often likened to animals).¹⁴¹

The growing evidence on the socio-psychological interconnections between speciesist and intrahuman discriminatory attitudes seems to repudiate the antagonistic assumption that animal rights must be sacrificed for the benefit of human rights. Rather, the reverse appears more likely: that disregard for animal rights may have negative effects on humans, by reinforcing the very (intrahuman) prejudices that human rights are supposed to fight.¹⁴² Considering that speciesism operates as a ‘multiplier of oppressive theories, attitudes, beliefs and practices that negatively affect marginalized humans’, Joe Wills rightly proposes that animal rights should be seen as ‘part of the solution to discrimination against marginalized humans, not as part of the problem’.¹⁴³

3.3.2.3 Dehumanization and Animalization: The Link Between (Collective) Violence Against Humans and Animals

Closely related to the aforementioned nexus between discriminatory mindsets towards humans and animals, there further exists a well-established link between physical violence against humans and animals.

On the level of individual or interpersonal violence, animal abuse has long been associated with violent crimes against humans and other antisocial behaviour.¹⁴⁴ Animal cruelty is often regarded as a ‘gateway crime’, and an indicator of someone’s later propensity for (extreme) violence such as serial homicide, sexual assault, and school shootings.¹⁴⁵ Furthermore, regardless of whether animal abuse is believed to be predictive of interpersonal violence,¹⁴⁶ it is well-known to co-occur with domestic violence against women and children, as an ‘abusive household’ tends to victimize all vulnerable family members.¹⁴⁷ It thus seems reasonable to assume that promoting respect for animal rights could simultaneously have ‘the “tangible” benefit of preventing violence towards humans and anti-social behavior that has a negative impact on society’.¹⁴⁸

Of even greater import to human rights is the link between collective violence against humans and institutionalized (socially cultivated and condoned) violence against animals.¹⁴⁹ Some of the gravest human rights violations have historically occurred and continue to happen during episodes of collective violence, such as wars and genocides. These acts of mass violence are regularly preluded by dehumanizing the victims and likening them to animals.¹⁵⁰ For example, during World War II, Jews in Nazi Germany were portrayed as vermin (‘rats’) and Japanese in America as ‘monkeys’ or ‘apes’, and during the Rwandan genocide, Tutsi were labelled ‘cockroaches’. Animalistic dehumanization¹⁵¹—a type of dehumanization that operates through animalization—is a recurring epiphenomenon of and psychological justification for human mass violence.¹⁵² Likening humans to animals marks them as less-than-human or subhuman, and works as a ‘psychological lubricant’ that lowers inhibitions against violence and enables the kind of destructiveness and cruelty that would be unthinkable in ordinary circumstances.¹⁵³

Animalistic dehumanization feeds on, and derives its meaning from, the ‘fundamental sacrifice of nonhuman animals’ in our society.¹⁵⁴ That is, collective violence against metaphorically animalized humans is informed and powered by a cultural backdrop of socially organized and normalized violence against actual animals.¹⁵⁵ Animalization works to disinhibit and justify violence against humans only because—encoded in and enforced through our everyday practices of institutionalized violence against real animals—the ‘animal’ signifies a position of inferiority, ‘socially sanctioned abjection’, and a legitimate target of instrumental violence.¹⁵⁶ The ‘animal’ designation offers a vast repertoire of socially habituated forms of cruelty that can be unleashed upon humans through the psychological mechanism of animalization. Consider the following passage in Theodor Adorno’s Minima Moralia:

The constantly encountered assertion that savages, blacks, Japanese are like animals, monkeys for example, is the key to the pogrom. The possibility of pogroms is decided in the moment when the gaze of a fatally-wounded animal falls on a human being. The defiance with which he repels this gaze – “after all, it’s only an animal” – reappears irresistibly in cruelties done to human beings, the perpetrators having again and again to reassure themselves that it is “only an animal”, because they could never fully believe this even of animals.¹⁵⁷

This suggests that as long as our society practices itself in the normalization and rationalization of violence against sentient beings perceived as others, this pattern of desensitization, indifference, and cognitive dissonance exercised and cultivated on animals is always in standby mode, ready to be activated against human others.¹⁵⁸ The foreground actuality of institutionalized violence against animals thus operates as the permanent background potentiality of collective violence against animalized humans.

The nexus between mass violence against humans and animals through the interlocking mechanisms of dehumanization and animalization should incline human rights scholars (especially of the exceptionalist and antagonistic variant) to face an inconvenient truth: human exceptionalism is toxic not just for animals, but also for humans.¹⁵⁹ Animalistic dehumanization is inextricably intertwined with the ideology of human exceptionalism.¹⁶⁰ Indeed, animalization equals dehumanization only within the binary logic of human exceptionalism.¹⁶¹ Recall that human exceptionalism rests on a conception of human nature that defines humanness in terms of unique features that separate (superior) humans from (inferior) animals. It is precisely this exceptionalist sense of unique humanness that is being denied to (dehumanized) humans when they are likened to animals.¹⁶² The human rights-relevant problem with the human-animal divide is that the ‘animal’ category is malleable, rarely ever confined to actual animals, and can be ‘ideologically deployed’ against other humans.¹⁶³ Put differently, the human-animal binary is not merely a descriptive-zoological scheme that neatly separates all humans from all animals, but rather, a ‘discursive resource’¹⁶⁴ that ‘has historically produced and may continue to reproduce a bloody margin of subhumans’.¹⁶⁵

Against the antagonistic assumption, it therefore seems to be the ideology of human exceptionalism (rather than animal rights) that undermines human rights. In fact, respect for animal rights would effectively disarm the psychological mechanism of animalization by erasing its violent meaning. As Scott Plous suggests, ‘the very act of “treating people like animals” would lose its meaning if animals were treated well.’¹⁶⁶

3.3.2.4 ‘Entangled Empathy’ and ‘Interspecies Solidarity’

Winston Nagan and colleagues note that human rights violations are often driven by ‘the emotion of negative sentiment which emerges as hate directed at the non-self “other”’, and thus by cognitive processes ‘devoid of affection, empathy or solidarity.’ On the other side, they identify the generation of positive sentiment in the form of empathy, compassion, and solidarity as ‘the driving force for a world culture of human rights’.¹⁶⁷ In a similar vein, Frederik von Harbou argues that human rights have their foundation in the natural faculty of empathy.¹⁶⁸ Perhaps most prominently, Richard Rorty offers a narrative of the human rights success story that rehabilitates ‘the role of emotion and recognition of suffering’,¹⁶⁹ and centres on sentimentality, sympathy, and solidarity (rather than rational morality).¹⁷⁰ Rorty pragmatically states that the ‘emergence of the human rights culture seems to owe nothing to increased moral knowledge, and everything to hearing sad and sentimental stories’.¹⁷¹ Human rights progress hinges on (privileged) people sympathizing with the suffering of the ‘the despised and oppressed,’¹⁷² and thus lives off empathy—the ability to relate to, and care about, someone else’s suffering. For a sympathy-based human rights culture to flourish, we need what Rorty calls a ‘sentimental education’ that cultivates among people an ‘increasing ability to see the similarities between ourselves and people very unlike us as outweighing the differences.’¹⁷³ It is this sense of commonality and kinship that helps different kinds of people to link up into ‘a “planetary community” dominated by a culture of human rights’.¹⁷⁴ Rorty further alludes to the ‘possibility of trans-species solidarity’,¹⁷⁵ by suggesting that the sort of sentimentally educated, nice people who believe that ‘prejudice against racial or religious groups is a terrible thing’ might also be convinced ‘to stop eating animals.’¹⁷⁶ This is because empathy redirects our focus onto the basic similarities that connect rather than the morally irrelevant differences that separate us as humans—and these relevant similarities are such ‘that do not interestingly distinguish us from many nonhuman animals.’¹⁷⁷

Research from social psychology seems to corroborate the Rortyan supposition that the same kind of sentimentally educated people who have sympathy for human others are likely to have compassion for other animals—and vice versa. Previously, we noted the interlinkages between prejudicial attitudes and violence against humans and animals. The other, brighter side of this nexus is that positive and rights-affirming attitudes towards humans and animals appear to be equally interlinked. Yon Soo Park and Benjamin Valentino have found a ‘strong connection between recognition of human rights and animal rights’ both at the individual attitude and the policy level.¹⁷⁸ Their findings suggest that people’s views about human and animal rights are tightly linked: ‘People who believe in extending greater rights and protections to disadvantaged and marginalised groups … also tend to be supportive of animal rights.’¹⁷⁹ Conversely, other studies have shown that emphasizing ‘the basic capacities shared by humans and animals has the effect of expanding moral concern, not only to animals but also to human outgroups.’¹⁸⁰ In short, greater concern for animal rights seems to correlate with greater concern for human rights.¹⁸¹

Of course, the likely explanation for this is that empathy for humans and other sentient animals is naturally linked, because the sympathy-triggering suffering of human and nonhuman animals is in many respects similar.¹⁸² Whereas it is sometimes assumed, in line with the antagonistic intuition, that humans should first care about other humans before caring about animals, Carol Adams asserts that such a ‘hierarchy of caring’ is mistaken. Rather, violence against and compassion for humans and animals are interdependent, and caring about both is required.¹⁸³ The sentimental education needed for a strong, sympathetic human rights culture ought thus to include a humane education that cultivates a sense of interspecies kinship and kindness—this promises to generate beneficial sentiments and outcomes for both humans and animals.¹⁸⁴

3.3.2.5 Moving from a Culture of Cruelty to a Human Rights Culture of Compassion

Contrary to the antagonistic assumption, animal rights appear to be conducive to a more inclusive, respectful, and compassionate human rights culture based on (transspecies) sympathy and solidarity. In fact, the foregoing suggests that it is not animal rights, but rather, the ideology of human exceptionalism and disregard for animal rights that is positively harmful to human rights. If human rights culture is (at least partly) based on empathy and compassion, it seems easy to see how our culture of cruelty against animals ends up hurting human rights too. Cultivating violence against animals deadens our natural feelings of empathy and desensitizes us to the suffering not only of animal others, but also of other humans.¹⁸⁵ Conversely, cultivating refined compassion on both ends is good for human and animal rights. The very sentiments of empathy and kinship that underlie the recognition of animal rights will only work to foster and reinforce a compassionate human rights culture.¹⁸⁶ Indeed, practicing transspecies sympathy and solidarity may move us from a culture of cruelty to a true human rights culture of compassion.¹⁸⁷

Overall, there are thus strong prudential reasons for recognizing animal rights as integral part of the human rights mandate.¹⁸⁸ Considering the socio-psychological interconnections between prejudice and violence against, and empathy and compassion for, humans and animals, protecting human and animal rights in concert seems to be the functionally better normative response to the human rights-relevant problems of oppression, discrimination, collective violence, and dehumanization.

3.3.3 The Environmental Nexus Between Human and Animal Rights

The second prudential reason for animal rights is of an eco-political nature and derives not from the socio-political but from the environmental interconnectedness of human and animal rights. In the present era of the Anthropocene, some of the most pressing and existential threats to human rights—such as climate change and pandemics—are closely linked to our systematic exploitation and extermination of animals. The current state of ‘planetary emergency’¹⁸⁹ provides perhaps the strongest incentive for integrating concern for animal rights into the human rights mandate. The prudential argument here is fairly straightforward and its scientific basis well-established. Therefore, the following will be limited to a brief outline of the human rights-relevant environmental problems and their nexus to animals, before extrapolating the indirect function that animal rights might serve with a view to better protecting human rights in the Anthropocene.

3.3.3.1 Environmental Threats to Human Rights and Their Links to Animal Exploitation

As was noted earlier, human rights growth is stimulated by changing material conditions, and new human rights emerge in response to novel threats to humanity.¹⁹⁰ Today, some of the most momentous natural (albeit anthropogenic) risks to human rights stem from climate change and other environmental degradation. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, David Boyd, states that we are ‘in the midst of an unprecedented environmental crisis’.¹⁹¹ The world is facing climate emergency;¹⁹² rising sea levels and temperatures;¹⁹³ potentially catastrophic biodiversity loss¹⁹⁴ (the ‘sixth mass extinction’¹⁹⁵); other environmental degradation such as deforestation, air, land, and water pollution; and interrelated public health risks such as the increasing emergence of zoonotic diseases like COVID-19.¹⁹⁶

Evidently, all of these environmental problems are immediately and profoundly human rights-relevant.¹⁹⁷ Climate change is now widely recognized as an ‘existential threat to civilization’,¹⁹⁸ one of the biggest threats to humanity,¹⁹⁹ and among the greatest and most pressing threats to human rights of both living and future generations.²⁰⁰ It already has major impacts on the full enjoyment of a wide range of human rights, such as the right to life (and in particular life with dignity),²⁰¹ health, food, water and sanitation, and is likely to have ‘cataclysmic impact in the future’ as the environmental crises worsen.²⁰² Climate-related natural disasters such as extreme weather events,²⁰³ torrential rain and floods, heatwaves, wild fires, droughts, and rising sea-levels have dire humanitarian impacts,²⁰⁴ and will lead to an increase in human mortality, illness, food and water insecurity,²⁰⁵ mass climate migration,²⁰⁶ and resource conflicts.²⁰⁷ Moreover, climate change and other environmental degradation act as an aggravator (the ‘ultimate threat multiplier’) of existing threats to international peace and security, and as a stressor to economic, social, and political systems and the stability of states, regions, and societies.²⁰⁸ In short, the (human-made) natural crises of the Anthropocene threaten core aspects of human life, well-being, health, security, as well as society and humanity as a whole.

The existential environmental crises that humanity faces today are deeply interwoven with the institutionalized exploitation and extermination of animals that are part and parcel of our social and economic fabric.²⁰⁹ Animal agriculture, especially industrial meat and milk production, is one of the main drivers (or the ‘main culprit’²¹⁰) of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions,²¹¹ deforestation,²¹² as well as biodiversity²¹³ and habitat loss.²¹⁴ Conversely, the need for transitioning to plant-based food systems and reducing the global consumption of animal products is now widely recognized—albeit not practiced—as a pivotal mitigation priority for halting climate change.²¹⁵ Moreover, the exploitation of farmed and wild animals exceedingly contributes to grave public health risks.²¹⁶ For example, three out of four emerging infectious diseases are zoonoses.²¹⁷ Wildlife markets (such as the one identified as a possible point of origin for the Corona virus)²¹⁸ and factory farms are breeding grounds for such zoonotic diseases that threaten human health.²¹⁹ Intensive animal farming, through its excessive use of antibiotics, also accelerates the rising threat of antimicrobial resistance. This growing public health problem is so serious, according to the WHO, that it ‘threatens the achievements of modern medicine’ and renders a ‘post-antibiotic era … a very real possibility for the twenty-first century.’²²⁰

In short, our collective maltreatment of animals simultaneously causes, feeds into, and aggravates many of today’s most pressing ecological risks to human rights. As Jeff Sebo encapsulates it, ‘Our exploitation and extermination of nonhuman animals are not only harming many nonhuman animals but also contributing to public health threats such as pandemics and environmental threats such as climate change.’²²¹

3.3.3.2 Indirect Contribution of Animal Rights towards Protecting Human Rights against Environmental Threats

Against the factual backdrop of ever-worsening environmental threats to human rights on the one hand and their intimate connection with our (ab)use and (mal)treatment of animals on the other hand, the eco-prudential argument for animal rights is as simple as it is compelling: animal rights would be beneficial to human rights, because eliminating animal exploitation will simultaneously eliminate one of the main drivers of some of the greatest human rights threats of our time.²²²

Contemporary human rights have an environmental dimension, and one increasingly important function of human rights is to protect humanity against the harms of climate change and other man-made natural threats.²²³ Human rights can properly fulfil this function only by addressing the underlying causes of these environmental risks and their nexus with animal exploitation, and by factoring in the interdependence of humans, animals, and the environment. In the natural sciences, this nexus is reflected in the concept of One Health—a holistic approach to global public health that recognizes the inextricable links between the health of humans, (domestic and wild) animals, and the environment.²²⁴ The central idea is that in order to achieve better public health outcomes for humans (for example, with regard to zoonotic diseases and antimicrobial resistance), it is necessary to integrate animal and environmental health, since these are interconnected.²²⁵ This integrative strategy has been further extended to a One Welfare approach, which views human and animal welfare as ‘intrinsically interconnected’ and advocates ‘balancing and promoting human and animal welfare in connected ecosystems and societies.’²²⁶ The human–animal–environment nexus was further recognized in a recent United Nations Environment Assembly Resolution, noting that ‘the health and welfare of animals, sustainable development and the environment are connected to human health and well-being’ and acknowledging the ‘increasing need to address these connections through the One Health approach, among other holistic approaches’.²²⁷ Such a holistic approach—a One Rights approach—is also warranted in the realm of human rights, reflecting the environmentally mediated interdependence of humans and animals. Accordingly, the factual nexus between environmental human rights-threats and animal exploitation should translate to a normative nexus between protecting human and animal rights. Protecting human rights against environmental and health threats such as climate change and pandemics may be functionally best facilitated by integrating the protection of animals against precisely the kind of exploitation and extermination that contributes to those existential human rights threats.

Current environmental problems provide a compelling ecological rationale for abolishing our institutionalized exploitation of animals and (albeit only for instrumental reasons) vesting them with anti-exploitative rights, as an effective means of preserving the preconditions for the enjoyment of human rights. Ironically, or dialectically, our exploitation of animals has thus produced the very material conditions that now render it prudent to recognize animal rights as an integral part of the human rights mandate. Simply put, treating animals as if they mattered (even if we cannot agree on the moral foundations) seems to be the best institutional safeguard against some of the worst environmental threats humanity faces today. Addressing the animal question is thus far from a mere ethical issue, but rather, it has become an existential necessity for humans. While it is sometimes assumed that the idea of animal rights is a nicety we can tend to once human rights are fully realized and secured, this belief is fatally mistaken. Quite the opposite is true: in the face of mounting environmental crises, ignoring the animal question has become a luxury humanity can no longer afford.

In the end, human and animal rights are in the same boat. Contrary to the antagonistic intuition, however, this metaphor does not stand for a lifeboat scenario²²⁸ in which animals have to be sacrificed in order to save human rights, but for a situation of shared fate and interdependence. Because human and animal existence are naturally and evermore interdependent, so should be the rights protecting them—One Health, One Welfare, One Rights.