Our animal protection laws

In a couple of recent decisions, our courts have taken a strict stance for animal protection. While these judgments could be championed for animal protection and welfare, many other incidents from different areas of the country paint a very different picture. This begets the question: How well does our legal and policy framework protect the voiceless around us? A look at our legislation/s focused on protecting animals from cruelty can give us an answer.

Arguably, the shift from the Cruelty to Animals Act 1920, to the current Animal Welfare Act, 2019, not only shows the passage of time but also reflects a positive shift in the philosophy of how we treat animals. While the earlier colonial-era law, in my view, considered animals only worthy of protection by virtue of their economic value, the 2019 Act sees them as sentient beings that ought to be protected regardless of whether they have any extrinsic benefit. The Codes of the World Organisation for Animal Health is the standard that most countries follow for setting the bar against animal cruelty, including Bangladesh. The WOAH standard establishes the ‘five freedoms’ of animal welfare, comprising freedom from hunger and thirst, freedom from fear and distress, freedom to express normal behaviour, freedom from pain, injury and disease, and lastly, freedom from discomfort. While setting the offences relating to animal cruelty, the 2019 Act also attempted to uphold the spirit of the WOAH standard. How much it falls short of the proper realisation of the standards is a question that requires more in-depth introspection.

Indeed, the ambiguity in some of the law’s core concepts are glaring and is a big reason for the law’s ineffective implementation. First, section 6 of the Act introduces the phrase ‘unnecessarily overworking the animal’ under the definition of animal cruelty without any indication as to the standard for a necessary amount of labour. Moreover, section 8 states that it would be a punishable offence if anyone puts an ‘excessive load of weight’ on draught animals but does not specify how the level of excessive load would be determined. These two ambiguities alone can be confusing to determine whether an offence was committed at all. Furthermore, when the Act made selective provisions to ban physical movement only for dogs, excluding all other animals, including cattle, which are usually prone to this form of abuse.

Although an objective of this law is to ensure and promote animal welfare, the law left the entire ‘welfare’ part to the executive without vesting any corresponding accountability mechanism. Because animals are not legal persons, they cannot directly file a case for cruelty inflicted upon them. A duty-based framework could be suitable for the current legal environment of Bangladesh without overburdening the government or introducing yet-unfamiliar concepts of animal personhood. Currently, the animals have no means of protection unless a court case is filed on the incident, or the Mobile Court is in the vicinity.

Section 18 further complicates the situation by setting up a gatekeeping clause that is notoriously present in some of our other conservation and welfare laws. It makes authoritative permission a prerequisite for trying any offence before a Court. This is a procedural bottleneck known to exacerbate the efforts to seek justice. Where even the Court cannot try a matter without an executive permit, the judiciary loses its independence, and whistleblowing is discouraged.

Establishing animal personhood or giving them ‘protection rights’ can be ambitious endeavours, but the seemingly pitted nature of our animal protection law is something the state can revise right now. In a world where animals are facing torture and mistreatment every day, it is only humane to ensure our voiceless friends are as protected as they should be.

The writer is lecturer at the Department of Law, East West University.