International Monkey Business: Animal Rights and International Ethics

Before the failed attempt at a League of Nations and the creation of the United Nations, philosopher John Stuart Mill recognized that international relations was not just an empirical study, but a normative one. He tells us that a fundamental goal of philosophers should be to formulate “some rule or criterion whereby the justifiableness of intervening in the affairs of other countries, and (what is sometimes fully as questionable) the justifiableness of refraining from intervention, may be brought to a definite and rational test.”[1] This call clearly does not limit itself to a discussion of interference based on human interests, and as such is a legitimate endeavor in regard to all individuals within the moral arena, including animals. Here I will outline a few of the initial difficulties that arise in producing an international ethic that accounts for animals in order to contextualize the basic framework that will follow. This sketch, then, will work as the first step towards an international ethic incorporating not only human beings but non-human animals.

I. The Difficulties of International Ethics

In the summer of 2007 a unique interaction between humans and animals arose in Kenya. In the midst of a drought a war broke out between a Kenyan village and a group of monkeys over the small amount of water that was available. As villagers attempted to collect water, they were violently attacked with rocks and chased away by a band of vervet monkeys. Moreover, these monkeys were not just after the water of the villagers. At dawn they invade the village, stealing crops, killing livestock and even sexually harassing women and children. According to one resident the “monkeys grab their breasts, and gesture at us while pointing at their private parts.”[2] Moreover, the monkeys are a protected species in Kenya, meaning the villagers can’t just fight back, but instead have to find ways to run them off or trap them without harm. Unfortunately, these smart monkeys evade the traps, sniff out and avoid tainted food and use lookouts to prepare their forces when villagers are seen coming towards them. This situation is perhaps one of the few where individual rights are perhaps truly being threatened by animals, and thus provides a unique example of the difficulties that can arise in promoting a general international ethic concerning animals.

One commentator, however, provided a very convincing solution to this monkey problem. This commentator advocates the opposite of what most people are calling for, which involved curtailing the legal protections for the monkeys, and instead extend to them full human rights. After extending full human rights, the Kenyan government would set aside a parcel of land and enshrine in law the monkeys’ “collective ownership”. The last step then will be to announce that something of great value has been found on the monkey-land, and the rest will take care of itself:

Before long armored divisions will start showing up to keep the peace. Machine gun bunkers will be built. Far overhead, out of sight of the monkeys, billion dollar airplanes will peer down throught their bombsights, trying to locate the laser the ground team is shining on a mudpile monkey hut so the bomber crew can precisely deliver a million dollar payload of explosives to eradicate the hut and all its occupants from the face of the earth.
An opposing monkey faction would be developed by dangling the carrot of power in front of an influential but well liked monkey leader of a monkey splinter group. To this faction the West could provide weapons, in return for assurances that when power was consolidated the weapon providers could expect the favor to be repaid. We just want to see an end to the monkey terror, you see.
But, with the other hand, the West could make sure that power never was consolidated. This way the monkeys would set themselves to the task of continually collecting whatever natural resource it was the West wanted, so they could afford a continual supply of weapons to fight a war that would never end.
If that isn’t a time and again proven effective method of monkey subordination I don’t know what is.[3]

Clearly the commentator’s argument here is ironic, but it does give us some insight into how the international community has responded to the notion of human rights, so in any discussion of animal rights we must recognize that we are not simply expanding an already clearly articulated and protected circle of ethical considerations. Just as the self-interest of government leaders and of nation-states often overwhelms ethical considerations of other populations, it is clear that this self-interest will interfere with the establishment of an international animal ethic. As Bernard Rollin has argued, the surrendering of autonomy that is necessary for international agreements to be successful does not easily follow from rational self-interest in the case of animals, as it may in the case of other international issues.[4] As such, it is not enough to simply appeal to the age-old notion of international realism, where nation-states will act solely in the name of their own self-interest. Instead, animals will need to be incorporated into an international ethic through “a widespread philosophical extension of widespread moral notions.”[5]

It is with this understanding in mind, then, that we can explore how ethical concerns have shifted from a notion of non-intervention in the affairs of other nation-states to one that recognizes there are certain concerns that require a greater involvement by the international community. This shift in focus has thus far been based mostly on good faith rather than any real enforcement mechanisms, but there have been certain issues codified in international law in regards to a nation-state’s treatment of its own people that can be used as a starting point for developing an international ethic for animals. While the United Nations has established certain criteria by which international action is mandated in the case of, say, genocide, the force behind such action is clearly quite limited. While it did lead to action in places such as the former Yugoslavia, it has failed more recently to resolve similar issues in Sudan and West Papua. Additionally, it is not enough that an international body that relies on voluntary agreement from its members has explicit rules governing when intervention into a nation-state’s affairs is justified, those members must also recognize when it is justified.

Unfortunately for the issue of humanitarian intervention, there is not a clear agreement between nation-state policy and international policy. Specifically, the United States put into place Presidential Decision Directive 25 in 1993, under Bill Clinton, which mandates that policymakers prove the U.S. has “vital interests” at stake in an international conflict before they are allowed to intervene (at least militarily). This directive has been continued through two more administrations and has effectively allowed the U.S. to wash its hands of being the “world police”, at least when police action would actually be useful. The first step, then, is to outline a framework that justifies humanitarian intervention, limited to the case of human interests, and then argue for the expansion of that justification to animals as well.

II. International Ethics, Reconsidered

Despite the lack of consensus on when or whether intervention in another nation-state’s affairs is justified, many political thinkers and theorists have attempted to establish a basic framework that takes into consideration the interests of each nation-state, independently, and the international community as a group. Perhaps the clearest principle that has been outlined was given by philosopher Peter Singer. Working to synthesize criteria offered up by former Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, international theorist Michael Walzer and others, Singer presents the following principle:

Humanitarian intervention is justified when it is a response (with reasonable expectations of success) to acts that kill or inflict serious bodily or mental harm on large numbers of people, or deliberately inflict on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, and when the state nominally in charge is unable or unwilling to stop it.[6]

This principle clearly takes quite a bit into consideration: it must be responsive, not proactive; it must have expectations of success; it must be a response to large scale harm; and it must respect the nation-state’s autonomy insofar as if it can and will solve it, the intervention is deemed unnecessary. While this principle is by no means the final word on the issue, for my purposes here it is sufficient to provide it as a relatively plausible framework for justifying intervention.

From here, then, it is necessary to reframe the principle from its purely anthropocentric focus (“large numbers of people”) to one that may plausibly take into account non-human animals. The first, and most important, thing to note is that for this principle to be limited to humans a morally relevant justification must be provided. I will deal with perhaps the strongest one here: the notion of the nation-state as a social contract between humans. This criticism would begin with the theory nation-states are formed when individuals, in a “state of nature”, tacitly agree to give up certain abilities so that greater rights are protected. Therefore, the nation-state has an obligation to these individuals, and if it has failed in its obligation then outside intervention would be justified. Unfortunately, no such agreement exists for non-human animals so there are no obligations to them and therefore there can be no failure to hold to the agreement on the part of the nation-state, and thus no justification for intervention.

This argument has problems at two levels: it makes the assumption that the individual human beings did tacitly agree, which there is no evidence of; and it assumes that tacit agreement to the original compact is a necessary condition of moral consideration. The first issue is quickly dealt with, since the argument for a tacit agreement is that although each individual didn’t initially agree to form the government, by participating in it and reaping the benefits of it they have now tacitly agreed. Animals can be said to have done the same thing – the Kenyan monkeys are clearly reaping the benefits of legal protections, and thus have tacitly agreed to the contract (at least as much as humans have). The second issue is solved in a related manner. Even if we assume non-human animals cannot tacitly consent to the social contract that does not mean they are not due moral consideration. A severely mentally disabled human probably cannot tacitly consent to the social contract, that is recognize they are entering any sort of limiting agreement, nor can an infant, but they are nonetheless given moral consideration. Social contract theorists often defend their theory by discussing the protection of the most vulnerable, something that wouldn’t occur in a state of nature. But as we are often clearly aware of, non-human animals may be the most vulnerable creatures among us. Therefore, a sufficiently legitimate government would have to extend moral consideration to non-human animals.

So the extension of this intervention principle is initially plausible, and therefore the systematic destruction of species that has occurred in remote places (usually through habitat destruction) and the killing of large amounts (in relation to their total) of certain species through governmental and non-governmental policies (whaling, for instance) may require intervention by those forces with the capabilities to stop it. The most pressing concern then would be how can the loss of human life be justified for the sake of animal life? This, again, concerns issues of morally relevant differences but more than that it is taken into consideration in the intervention principle. A large loss of human life, even if it preserves a marginally larger population of animals, may not be a “successful” mission – as it is often thought when discussing intervention in the name of humans as well. Additionally, intervention in another country’s affairs, in this case, may not even require military action, but rather harsh pressures that could perhaps harm people (sanctions, for instance) but are nonetheless done in the name of preserving a great deal of animal life.

Finally, it is important to recognize that there will be instances where the legitimate interests of humans and animals come into conflict, such as in the village in Kenya. While this is certainly a much smaller scale issue, it can be examined as an interesting parallel for larger-scale conflicts. In this situation, a protected species has come into conflict with a group of humans and has driven them to requiring international famine relief. In these instances the very basic interests of human beings, namely the necessities of survival and a sense of security, are in conflict with similar interests of non-human animals. A situation like this may fall totally outside the realm of the intervention principle, or may require additional provisos to the principle to account for how the international community, or simply the nation-state, is to respond. Just as the promotion of human rights abroad is no clear-cut policy, the promotion of animal rights abroad will not be either.

It is important to note that the initial intervention principle, along with a more expansive one, is not hard and fast rules for action. There are a lot of nuances that go into policy action and situational differences will necessitate alteration, but it nonetheless provides a more useful framework than the seemingly unethical principle of “vital interests”. My goal here is only to sketch the initial plausibility of such a system of “humanitarian” intervention that can account for an expanding moral circle. Unfortunately, as we have seen with attempts to expand the international ethic to one that treats citizens of another nation-state as equally (or nearly equally) deserving of moral consideration as citizens of one’s own nation-state, just providing rational arguments is often not enough to truly establish an international ethic.

[2] Njeri, J. (2007, August 24). Monkey misery for Kenyan women villagers. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6959209.stm

[3] Hijacked Public. (2007, August 25). Attack of the evil monkeys from hell. Retrieved from science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/25/0151207&from=rss

[4] Rollin, Bernard. “Environmental Ethics and International Justice.”Applied Ethics: A Multicultural Approach. Comp. Larry May. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1994. Print: 139.

[5] Ibid., 141.

[6] Singer, Peter. One World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002: 125.