On The 'Belgium Ruling': The Need to Establish the Status of Non-human Animals within the Human Rights Corpus and Law.

Bill Page

Published: 24/06/2025

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Abstract:

In this article, I contextualise the recent European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruling in Executief van de Moslims van België and Others v. Belgium (hereafter referred to as the ‘Belgium ruling’) within the broader cultural distinction between non-human animals and humans. In this case, the ECtHR was tasked with balancing the right to freedom of religion with a ban on the slaughter of non-human animals without prior stunning, as a measure intended to reduce animal suffering.

I contextualise the ‘Belgium ruling’ by tracing how the policing of the boundary between human and non-human animals has been perpetuated through colonialism and imperialism, which employed a racialised hierarchy of species to justify the dehumanisation of colonised peoples. With the emergence of human rights, the United Nations actively sought to establish the recognition of all peoples as belonging to a single species, unified by a shared biological foundation. Yet this effort also reveals that the concept of species is not a neutral biological category but a social and cultural construct, historically entangled with white supremacy and colonial domination. Such attempts have obscured human animality and denied dignity to non-human animals.

This is significant because attributing animal status to certain people has long served as a powerful means of undermining human dignity and rights. I undertake a review of legal cases concerning non-human animals, from Victorian England to the Belgium ruling, highlighting a persistent trend: the value of non-human animals is consistently assessed through the lens of ‘public morals’ or ‘human interest’, rather than their inherent worth. This has created significant ambiguity and a circular line of reasoning where the justification of animal suffering and exploitation is framed solely in terms of human morals or interests.

Ultimately, the ways in which humans treat the non-human world inevitably reflect back onto human societies, as history has shown, and as we are witnessing again in the face of the climate crisis. As powerful groups continue to draw on the language of dehumanisation, it becomes increasingly urgent to recognise that humans are animals. I therefore conclude by affirming that the dignity of all animals, human and non-human alike, is inviolable. Such an approach holds the potential to confront the very injustices and forms of oppression that the human rights framework was created to address.

Key words:

Non-Human Dignity, Environmental Institutionalism, Intersectional Rights, Public Morality