Today forty years ago, the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment was adopted, with now 174 state parties.[1] Supposedly a groundbreaking framework, it remains narrow and exclusionary even for humans while sentient nonhumans are completely left out. Billions of nonhuman animals today are subjected to horrific forms of torture, with impunity. Though most countries have anti-cruelty laws, the definition of cruelty is narrow, they are typically only applied to companion animals, and are rarely enforced. Anti-cruelty laws do not criminalize the torture normalized in economic sectors reliant on animal abuse. These noncriminalized corporate crimes come with the complicity of states, which fail to honor their duty to protect sentient beings under their jurisdiction. Freedom from torture is a non-derogable right: under no circumstances is its infringement tolerated.[2] Yet, states and corporations find a panoply of excuses to derogate from fundamental rights such as the right to life and the right to remain free from torture.

Across a variety of commercial sectors, torture is the prerequisite for profit and the precursor of killing. Yearly, 100 million foxes, minks, chinchillas, sables, raccoons and other animals bred for fur are held captive for months in tiny wire cages, then killed: electrocuted, suffocated, poisoned, gassed, bled to death, even skinned alive.[3] Animals raised to be eaten are often so excessively grown through selective breeding and over-feeding (combined with lack of adequate movement), that they live their short lives tortured by the weight of their own bodies, developing arthritis, osteoporosis, fractures, wounds and necroses, cardiovascular diseases, and other conditions.[4] Many birds are debeaked without anaesthetic to prevent them from pecking and cannibalism, which occur due to captivity and overcrowding.[5] Billions of newborn male chicks are ground up alive, deemed useless to the egg industry.[6] Dolphins and whales (like the beluga in my cover photo) are trapped for years or decades in small, concrete tanks in aquaria or oceanaria, and many prematurely die from the severe physical and psychological harms of captivity.[7] Elephants, tigers, bears and other animals in zoos and circuses are condemned to unlivable lives, for human entertainment: confined, starved, and aggressed during trainings. In the meat industry, sows and cows are impregnated by force, repeatedly until their body breaks down. Primates and rodents trapped in labs for years are subjected to torturous experiments for the “advancement” of science. Our need to consume, literally and figuratively, animal bodies renders torture invisible.

Is the Convention Against Torture even adequately protecting humans? Not really. Torture is defined as the intentional infliction of severe physical or mental suffering, to obtain information or to punish, intimidate or coerce, inflicted by or with the involvement or consent of a public official.[8] This narrow framing fixated on obtaining information and the involvement of a state agent means other contexts of and purposes for torture can escape accountability. Since the Convention Against Torture guides national legislation and NGO programs on torture, its limiting definition (mis)shapes societal responses to torture.[9]

This narrow focus on state involvement matters because many forms of torture today are perpetrated by non-state actors; the state no longer holds the monopoly on violence. Militias, paramilitaries, private military contractors, or extremist organizations routinely torture people in times of war and peace. Narcotics and human trafficking cartels use torture to co-opt people in their crimes or to crush resistance to crimes. Corporations inflict torturous violence against humans and nonhumans who can be objectified for profit. Patriarchal, religiously fundamentalist societies torture millions of girls and women, routinely abused physically and psychologically from barbaric practices such as female genital mutilation or forced marriages. Regardless of the contexts of torture, motives for torture, and agents of torture, in a victim-centred analysis, we need to recognize the effects of torture, which are independent from the legal definition of torture.

Though torture typically comes with impunity, we sometimes see exceptions. One is the recent ruling by a US federal court that CACI Premier Technology Inc., a government contractor, is liable for its role in the torture of three Iraqi men at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003–2004. This landmark victory comes after 16 years of litigation and is the first time survivors of the post-9/11 torture regime are testifying in a US court.[10] The $42 million in damages awarded to the victims (Suhail Al Shimari, a middle school principal, Asa’ad Zuba’e, a fruit vendor, and Salah Al-Ejaili, a journalist) will not heal their broken body and soul, but it gives us some hope that the law is not always in paralysis. Another major development is the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and the release on 8 December by insurgent forces of torture survivors from the Saydnaya military prison.[11] Over the past decades, hundreds of thousands of Syrians, mainly civilians perceived to oppose the Assad regime, have been severely tortured and executed at Saydnaya and other torture/death camps.[12] Billions, humans and nonhumans, have been and are tortured with impunity.

Drawing on the similarities between crimes against humanity and our crimes against nonhuman animals, at World Animal Justice (WAJ) we seek to have crimes against animality recognized under international law. And, I would add, our collective complicity in such crimes is a crime against our own humanity. Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, eleven types of crimes can be charged as crimes against humanity.[13] Among these, the crimes which could be extended to our abuse of animals include: murder and extermination (trillions of animals are either directly killed to be consumed or indirectly exterminated, through climate change, deforestation, and other anthropogenic activities); enslavement (the use and abuse of animals across a variety of commercial sectors bears significant similarities to human enslavement); forcible transfer (millions of animals are uprooted by wildlife trade or displaced by “development” projects or by ecosystem changes/damage caused by climate change); imprisonment (captivity is a reality for billions of domesticated and wild animals); torture (routine against animals and synergistic with other crimes here); sexual/reproductive violence (animals are often subjected to forced pregnancy or forced sterilization). While “dreaded comparisons”[14] between humans and nonhumans are often avoided in legal circles, I believe such comparisons, when it comes to the crimes above, are evidence-based and needed to counter the normalization of crime and impunity.

Torture is one among several crimes against humanity attesting the similarities between the suffering inflicted on humans and on sentient nonhumans. My recent research on nonhuman captivity[15] shows how confinement, due to its severe physical and psychological effects, is a form of torture against sentient beings. At the same time, captivity routinely occurs in tandem with other forms of torture and is the precursor of killing. Besides torture, genocide could also be a concept worth stretching. In my prior work I showed why industrial animal farming and wildlife trade should be treated as a continuum between genocide and ecocide, not as normal and legal sectors.[16] The acts and underlying intent criminalized under genocide and the not yet criminalized harms of ecocide are often applicable to sectors reliant on the intensive (ab)use of trillions of wild and domesticated animals.

Torture against sentient nonhumans is pervasive yet neglected not just by the law, but also by scholarship. Despite extensive studies covering the nuances of torture,[17] these either completely skip torture against animals or only in passing mention it, a significant omission since in both scale and brutality, the torture of nonhumans is far more serious than torture endured by humans. As noted in my review of some of this scholarship on torture, for critical legal studies, criminology and zemiology to be credible intellectual pursuits, we cannot continue unseeing the primary victims of the crimes we decry.[18]

Established legal concepts protecting humans, such as torture and genocide, can and should be expanded to include nonhumans. I believe that instead of pursuing revolutionary animal rights frameworks, it might be more effective to stretch our conceptualization of phenomena already criminalized and rooted in the collective consciousness as unacceptable. While this may seem unrealistic, the history of atrocities normalized over millennia (such as colonialism, slavery, genocide, wars of conquest) which are now outlawed might serve as inspiration: while crime prevention, punishment and repair are slow and incomplete, they do sometimes succeed.

This 40^th anniversary of the Convention Against Torture reminds us that international conventions meant to protect from grave wrongdoings do not adequately serve humans while nonhumans are fully denied the protections they need. Conceptualizing crimes narrowly within existing legal paradigms is a disservice to victims, humans and nonhumans. Given the ongoing and horrific forms of torture endured by beings of different species, understanding the similarities and intersections between these crimes against humans and nonhumans can create compassion and solidarity.

• References

[1] Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (adopted 10 December 1984, entered into force 26 June 1987) UNTS 1465 <https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%201465/volume-1465-I-24841-English.pdf>.

[2] Ibid, Art. 2.2 and 2.3.

[3] Eurogroup for Animals & Respect for Animals, The Case Against Fur Factory Farming in Europe (2023) <https://www.eurogroupforanimals.org/files/eurogroupforanimals/2023-03/202303_efa_The%20case%20against%20fur%20factory%20farming_Report.pdf>.

[4] Peter Singer, “The Short, Painful Life of Your Thanksgiving Turkey” (2024) The Guardian <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/26/consider-the-turkey-peter-singer?>; Four Paws, “Torture Breeding of Farm Animals” (2023) <https://www.four-paws.org/campaigns-topics/topics/farm-animals/torture-breeding-of-farm-animals>.

[5] American Veterinary Medical Association, “Literature Review on the Welfare Implications of Beak Trimming” (2010) <https://www.avma.org/sites/default/files/resources/beak_trimming_bgnd.pdf>.

[6] BBC, “German Court Rules Mass-killing of Male Chicks Legal” (2019) <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48620884>; Jackson Ryan, “How CRISPR Could Save 6 Billion Chickens from the Meat Grinder” (2020) CNET <https://www.cnet.com/science/how-crispr-could-save-6-billion-chickens-from-the-meat-grinder/>.

[7] Lori Marino, “Interview with Lori Marino: ‘Captivity Seriously Damages the Brains of Intelligent Mammals”’ (2022) 113 Mètode <https://metode.org/issues/entrevista-revistes/interview-with-lori-marino.html?>.

[8] Convention Against Torture (n 1), Art. 1.1.

[9] Leading organizations working against torture (research, advocacy, clinical care for survivors) adopt this narrow definition: the Center for Victims of Torture, which has supported over 50,500 survivors so far, defines torture as “the intentional infliction of physical or psychological pain and suffering by or at the behest or acquiescence of any member or official of the state in power”; see Center for Victims of Torture, “Frequently Asked Questions” (2024) <https://www.cvt.org/about-us/frequently-asked-questions/>. Similarly, Amnesty International notes, “Torture is when somebody in an official capacity inflicts severe mental or physical pain or suffering on somebody else for a specific purpose”; Amnesty International, “Torture” (2024) <https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/torture/>.

[10] Center for Constitutional Rights, “Abu Ghraib Verdict: Iraqi Torture Survivors Win Landmark Case as Jury Holds Private Contractor CACI Liable” (2024) <https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/abu-ghraib-verdict-iraqi-torture-survivors-win-landmark-case-jury>.

[11] William Christou, “Inside the Hunt for Hidden Cells in Sednaya Prison, Syria’s ‘Human Slaughterhouse’” (2024) The Guardian <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/09/inside-sednaya-torture-prison-syria-assad>.

[12] Amnesty International, Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison, Syria (2017) <https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde24/5415/2017/en>.

[13] Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (adopted 17 July 1998, entered into force 1 July 2002, last amended 2010) 3–4 <https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/2024-05/Rome-Statute-eng.pdf>.

[14] Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery (Mirror Books 1996).

[15] Rimona Afana, “Challenging Captivity: Legal, Legislative, and Civic Strategies for Liberating Confined Animals” (2024) Forthcoming journal paper and presentation: Animals & Society Institute colloquium series <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d8WFMraDGM>.

[16] Rimona Afana, “From Speciesism to Theriocide: Wildlife Trade and Industrial Animal Farming as Embodiments of the Genocide–Ecocide Continuum” in Wendy Wiseman and Burak Kesgin (eds), Lost Kingdom: Animal Death in the Anthropocene (Vernon Press 2024).

[17] Darius Rejali, Torture and Democracy (Princeton University Press 2007); John Conroy, Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture (University of California Press 2000); Tobias Kelly, This Side of Silence: Human Rights, Torture, and the Recognition of Cruelty (University of Pennsylvania Press 2013); George Ryley Scott, The History Of Torture (Taylor & Francis 2013); Metin Başoğlu (ed), Torture and Its Definition in International Law: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Oxford University Press 2017); Victoria Canning, Torture and Torturous Violence: Transcending Definitions of Torture (Bristol University Press 2023).

[18] Rimona Afana, “Review of Victoria Canning, Torture and Torturous Violence: Transcending Definitions of Torture” (2024, forthcoming) State Crime Journal.