The UDAW was conceived in 2000 by a group of animal welfare organizations including
World Animal Protection (formerly the World Society for the Protection of Animals), which now acts as its Secretariat. It is supported by a planning group including
Compassion in World Farming,
Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), the
International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and the
Humane Society of the United States. In 2003 in the Philippines, the Manila Conference on Animal Welfare was attended by 19 government delegations with the
European Council, United States and
Saipan as observers. A foundation text with core principles for a UDAW was agreed. In 2005, the UDAW inter-governmental steering committee was formed and representatives of the governments of Kenya, India, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic and the Philippines agreed to champion the initiative. They led a group of governments whose officials have stated support in the following years, including Cambodia, Fiji, Latvia, Lithuania, New Zealand, Poland, Slovenia, Tanzania and the United Kingdom. In May 2007, the
World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) passed a resolution supporting the development of a UDAW in principle, as did the Commonwealth Veterinary Association (CVA) and the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe (FVE). In August 2008, the national veterinary associations of
Chile,
New Zealand, the
UK, the
Philippines,
Thailand and
Colombia have all given public backing for a UDAW. In April 2008, Eric Martlew MP put forward an
early day motion in the
House of Commons of the United Kingdom that "calls upon the Government to give its full and stated support for this initiative, including active support within the European Union and the United Nations." The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations recognised UDAW in 2009, integrating animal welfare into its poverty alleviation, disaster relief and livestock development programmes and stating in a report of an expert meeting that, "The Draft Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare (World Animal Protection 2007)... provides a valuable guiding philosophy for efforts to improve the welfare of animals". And, in the same year, the Council of the European Union discussed the proposal for a Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare and agreed that, "animal welfare is an issue of common concern and importance" It encouraged the EU Commission "to support and initiate further international initiatives to raise awareness and create a greater consensus on animal welfare". It also invited the member states and the Commission, within their respective competencies, "to support, in principle, the UDAW initiative in the relevant international fora". There have been several drafts of the declaration, with the most recent proposed in 2014. This draft takes into account feedback from UN member states, international organisations and non-governmental organisations. It develops the earlier draft arising from the Manila conference on animal welfare (2003) and the Costa Rica draft (2005) which incorporated suggestions made by the Steering Committee. It has been argued that a UDAW is consistent with, and could help secure the achievement of, the
UN Millennium Development Goals. and the subsequent
Sustainable Development Goals. The declaration as of October 2014 had the support, in principle, of 46 countries and of ministries from 17 further countries. More than 2.5 million people from a wide variety of UN member states have supported the public campaign. Some have argued that the agreement does not go far enough and should guarantee animal rights instead of simply animal welfare.
Historical background The lack of success in shaping internationally binding charters on animal rights has not been for want of trying. People in modern times have attempted to identify and advance the rights of animals at least since the 18th century. Credit usually goes to
Henry Stephens Salt (1851–1939) for writing the first book on animal rights, published in 1892 and subsequently. And Salt traces efforts back to
John Lawrence (1753–1839), one of the earliest modern writers on animal rights and welfare. Lawrence argued in his 1796 book,
A Philosophical and Practical Treatise on Horses and the Moral Duties of Man Towards Brute Creation (T N Longman: London), that we have to care for animals and common law should support this principle in practice The 20th century saw a number of international declarations supporting animal rights. Perhaps the most prominent venture was the Universal Declaration for Animal Rights which was announced by The French League of Animal Rights on 15 October 1978 at the United Nation's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (
UNESCO) house in Paris (not by UNESCO itself!). Among the Declaration's pronouncements were that all animals have the same rights to existence, no animal shall be ill-treated or subject to cruelty, animals shall command the protection of law, and dead animals shall be treated with respect. The Declaration, however, waned and faded away before it could reach significant levels of international agreement. An attempt to create a more legally binding
UN Convention on Animal Health and Protection (UNCAHP) in 2019, seems to have stalled as well. The idea of a (universal) Declaration of Animal Rights which would be endorsed by the UN with the same status as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was revived in 2011 by the US animal rights organization Our Planet. Theirs Too., which drafted The Declaration of Animal Rights, and proclaimed it publicly on 5 June 2011, at the first
National Animal Rights Day event in New York City. Since then, this Declaration has been gaining momentum and signatures around the world. At the same time, several leading animal welfare organizations have started campaigning for the United Nations to adopt a different declaration, this time on the welfare of animals: the Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare, based on the rationale that animal welfare would have better chances of even being discussed at the UN level, than animal rights. The organizations behind this declaration envisaged that signatory countries to the document would recognize animals as sentient beings, and hoped that their declaration would make animal welfare an important global issue, pave the way for legally binding international agreements on animal welfare and hasten a better deal for animals worldwide. The declaration would also underscore the importance of animal welfare as part of the moral development of humanity. So far a number of United Nations member states have acted as a steering group to advance the initiative at the UN. See Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare, below, for a draft copy. == Overview of the proposed declaration ==