Hunting and Human Rights

The debate over recreational hunting in Switzerland is conducted almost exclusively as a nature conservation and animal welfare issue. This is shortsighted. Recreational hunting not only violates wild animals, it also violates the fundamental rights of people who want nothing to do with this bloody leisure activity and are nonetheless forced to tolerate it on their land, in their residential environment, and with their tax money.

Property guarantee, freedom of conscience, right to private and family life: These are not activist demands, but codified fundamental rights protected by the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court of Human Rights has applied them in several landmark rulings against compulsory hunting. In France, Germany, Luxembourg and Portugal, hunting law was subsequently adjusted. Not in Switzerland.

What awaits you here

The ECtHR and the end of compulsory hunting in Europe. How the Chassagnou (1999) and Herrmann (2012) rulings overturned compulsory hunting in France and Germany and why Switzerland has not drawn the consequences.
Property rights: Whose land is this actually? Why armed third parties may enter private property and whether this is compatible with the property guarantee under Art. 26 Federal Constitution.
Freedom of conscience and compulsory hunting. How ethical hunting opponents in Switzerland are forced to tolerate a system that neighboring states have long recognized as violating human rights.
Right to private and family life. Shots near residential areas, harassed animals in the residential environment and the question of whether Art. 8 ECHR permits this.
Safety: The balance sheet that nobody keeps. 14 fatal hunting accidents in four years, over 1,000 accidents with hunting weapons and the question of why this is not a public issue.
What would need to change.Four concrete legal steps: hunting-free private property, freedom of conscience, settlement protection, and professional wildlife supervision.
Arguments.Responses to the most important legal objections from the recreational hunting lobby.
Quicklinks.All relevant articles, judgments and dossiers at a glance.

The ECHR and the End of Hunting Coercion in Europe

The landmark judgment came in 1999: In the case of Chassagnou and others v. France, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the mandatory membership of property owners in hunting associations and the obligation to tolerate hunting on their own land violated the European Convention on Human Rights. The core of the judgment: people with hunting-critical or animal ethical convictions may not be forced to actively support a system of recreational hunting. Freedom of conscience also applies to the hunting lobby.

In 2012, the ECHR confirmed this position in the case of Herrmann v. Germany: property owners do not have to tolerate hunting on their land without restriction. Germany adapted its hunting law. Since then, owners can prohibit hunting on their properties for ethical reasons. The same applies today in France, Luxembourg and Portugal. Signs like 'Private property, hunting prohibited' are a reality there for reasons of conscience. In Switzerland they are unthinkable.

The ECHR's message is the same in both judgments: the hunting passion of a minority may not be placed above property rights and freedom of conscience of the general public. Switzerland likes to invoke high standards of rule of law and human rights protection. At the same time, it forces people who strictly reject hunting for animal and conscience reasons to tolerate this hunting on their land. This is no oversight. It is the result of lobby power.

More on this: Template texts for hunting-critical motions in cantonal parliaments and Ending recreational violence against animals

Property Rights: Whose Land Is It Actually?

In many Swiss cantons, property ownership automatically lies within the hunting territory. Hunting societies have the right to hunt, even if the owners categorically reject this for ethical reasons. In cantons with territorial hunting, property owners are de facto forced members in a system they can neither support nor control.

This raises a constitutional question that has not been posed courageously enough in Switzerland so far: Is it compatible with the property guarantee according to Art. 26 Federal Constitution that armed third parties can enter private property, pursue and shoot animals, without the owner being able to prevent this? The ECHR has clearly answered this question for comparable legal systems. Switzerland has not drawn the consequence.

Legally precarious is the construct of 'ownerless wild animals': wild animals are legally considered ownerless, but hunting them is conducted like a taxable production process on private land. Those who profit are the hunting societies. Those who bear the consequences are the property owners, the wild animals, the population.

More on this: Arguments against recreational hunting and for game wardens and Hunting in Switzerland: numbers, systems and the end of a narrative

Freedom of Conscience: What It Means to Be Forced to Hunt

Freedom of conscience is protected in Switzerland by Art. 15 Federal Constitution and Art. 9 ECHR. It protects not only religious convictions, but also profound ethical positions: the conviction that killing sentient beings for recreational motives is morally wrong. Anyone who holds such a conviction and is a property owner is nevertheless forced in Switzerland to tolerate hunting on their land, to endure the infrastructure of the hunting society and to co-finance the external costs of the system.

This is a conflict of conscience that has long been legally resolved in neighboring states. In Germany, a property owner who rejects hunting for ethical reasons can have their property removed from the hunting territory. The mechanism is administrative and has been found lawful by the courts. This possibility does not exist in Switzerland. One can object as much as one wants: the hunting society comes anyway.

More on this: Hunting and human rights (original article) and Hunter lobby in Switzerland: How influence works

Right to Private and Family Life: Shots at the Front Door

Hunting in Switzerland often takes place in immediate proximity to settlements. In many cantons, the settlement area explicitly belongs to the hunting territory. Hunting societies are thus allowed to pursue their hobby practically up to garden fences and forest edges. For affected families this means: shots, noise, fear for children and dogs, encounters with hunted or dying animals in the residential environment.

Art. 8 ECHR protects the right to respect for private and family life. Whether this protection readily allows regular confrontation with hunting violence in one's own residential environment is a question that is hardly posed in Swiss legal practice. Children who experience a fox den on their way to school, from which dogs are barking as they are driven underground, or who encounter a hunting stand with a bait site on a walk, have no say in the matter. Neither do their parents.

Yet a solution would be simple: where exceptionally a culling is necessary near settlements, this could be taken over by game wardens or police. There is no need for hunting societies that act according to their own interests.

More on this: Geneva and the hunting ban and Hunting and children

Safety: The Balance Sheet Nobody Keeps

When a wolf kills livestock, the political reaction in Switzerland is immediate and loud. When a hobby hunter shoots or injures a person, it is a private matter. Between 2010 and 2013, there were fourteen fatal hunting accidents in Switzerland and around 200 non-fatal accidents with hunting weapons, among a total of 1,157 accidents according to the Bureau for Accident Prevention. These include cases where uninvolved parties were hit, and they are almost absent from the public hunting debate.

Anyone who locates the monopoly of violence with the state, because the state is most capable of enforcing safety standards, training controls and sanctions, must explain why thousands of private individuals are allowed to operate with lethal weapons in public, under rules that were co-designed by the hunting lobby, and with supervision that is structurally too close to hunting interests to be independent. This is not a question of animal welfare. It is a question of public safety.

More on this: Hunting and weapons: risks, accidents and the dangers of armed hobby hunters and Switzerland: Statistics on fatal hunting accidents

What Would Need to Change

Professional wildlife supervision instead of recreational hunting: The monopoly of violence belongs in the hands of the state, not those of recreational associations. Professionally founded, state-responsible wildlife management following the Geneva model is the human rights-coherent path.
Right to hunting-free private property: Property owners must be able to free their properties from recreational hunting for ethical reasons, as is already possible in Germany, France, Luxembourg and Portugal following ECHR judgments. Switzerland owes this legal step. Model motion: Template texts for hunting-critical motions
Protection of freedom of conscience in hunting law: People who reject recreational hunting on moral grounds must not be forced to structurally support recreational hunting or tolerate it on their land. Art. 15 of the Federal Constitution and Art. 9 ECHR must also apply against the hunting lobby.
Clear rules for residential areas: Recreational hunting in immediate proximity to residential areas, children's playgrounds and recreational spaces must be prohibited. Where shooting is exceptionally necessary, game wardens or police take over. Model motion: Game wardens instead of hobby hunters

Arguments: The most important legal counter-arguments

«Hunting rights are cantonal law, the ECHR is not directly applicable.» The ECHR is directly applicable law in Switzerland and takes precedence over cantonal law. The ECHR judgments against France and Germany are not binding precedent for Switzerland, but a clear signal of how comparable legal questions are assessed at European level. Swiss courts and legislators cannot permanently ignore this jurisprudence.

«Hunting serves the public interest, therefore it overrides private rights.» Restricting fundamental rights in the public interest requires a legal basis, a legitimate public goal and proportionality. That recreational hunting represents a legitimate public interest justifying violation of property rights and freedom of conscience is not tenable according to the current state of science and ECHR jurisprudence.

«Property owners can file objections.» Swiss hunting law does not provide a general possibility to exempt properties from hunting for ethical reasons. Objections are limited to formal procedural errors, not ethical conscience grounds. This is the structural core of the problem.

«Hunting noise is like construction noise, it must be tolerated.» Construction noise is time-limited, publicly permitted and serves a comprehensible public purpose. Hunting noise is periodic, uncontrolled and primarily serves the pleasure of a private minority. This equation is legally untenable.

Quicklinks

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Our claim

Hunting is not just a question of tradition and animal ethics. It has long been a question of human rights. Property guarantee, freedom of conscience and right to private and family life are codified fundamental rights, not activist demands. The European Court of Human Rights has made clear in two landmark judgments that compulsory hunting and forced membership in hunting systems can be incompatible with these fundamental rights. France, Germany, Luxembourg and Portugal have drawn the consequence. Switzerland has not yet drawn it because the hunting lobby is more powerful than the ECHR's jurisprudence. That is the finding. And it will not dissolve by not stating it. This dossier is continuously updated when new judgments, motions or political developments require it.

More on recreational hunting: In our hunting dossier we bundle fact-checks, analyses and background reports.