Petition: Prosecute Minors in Hobby Hunting

Witnessing wildlife being terrorised, shot, or otherwise slaughtered is undoubtedly traumatic for children. It can be psychologically devastating for young people, who most often have a natural empathy for animals.

Having to watch animals being killed for human entertainment can deeply disturb young people and desensitise them to the suffering of animals. It teaches children that the lives of others are not valuable and that it is acceptable – even pleasurable – to inflict pain on them and torment them.

It has been proven that there is a link between animal cruelty in childhood and antisocial behavior in adulthood. According to a study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, witnessing cruelty or neglect can cause children to mistreat people and other animals in the future.

Hunts are terrible for children and animals

Animals killed for fun by hobby hunters have the same capacity to suffer and feel pain as the dogs and cats we share our homes with – indeed, as humans do. Witnessing wildlife being terrorized, shot, or otherwise slaughtered is unquestionably traumatic for children. For young people, most of whom have a natural empathy for animals, this can lead to psychological scarring. This is particularly concerning when one considers that sociological studies have found that violent and aggressive criminals have without exception begun with the abuse of animals.

Join the campaign

To help young people develop properly, it is essential that we take measures to protect them from witnessing acts of violence against animals.

Join the campaign and sign the petition to decision-makers in the cantons.

Also contact the government independently and demand that children be prohibited from participating in hunts!

As the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has noted, it is of critical importance for the development of young people that we take measures to protect them from witnessing acts of violence against animals. We ask you to follow the Committee's recommendation and prohibit children from participating in hunts.

Call on the government to respect children's rights.

You can also independently email the petition text to a politician or a party of your choice.

Dear decision-makers

The appeal of the highest international body for the rights of minors calls on states to protect minors from the “harmful effects of violence”.

In a very welcome development, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child adopted “General Comment 26” on 23 August 2023.

Children and young people must be protected from all forms of violence. The passive and active participation of children and young people in hunting activities is therefore impermissible. The Convention on the Rights of the Child includes, among other things, the right of all minors to physical and mental integrity. At the same time, it encompasses the state's obligation to guarantee the protection of said rights. In the area of hunting, hobby hunters notoriously violate this obligation.

When one examines the effects on children caused by the abuse of animals in various forms, one implicitly acknowledges that children are affected by a culture of violence through witnessing such acts, because they have an empathetic connection to the feelings of an animal. As the UN Committee confirmed, this applies regardless of the species. Studies demonstrate that children who witness violence against animals are negatively affected in their capacity for empathy and come to regard such violence as normal over time.

«Children must be protected from all forms of physical and psychological violence and from exposure to violence, such as domestic violence or violence against animals» – UN Committee on the Rights of the Child

The Committee, which is responsible for monitoring the implementation of the Convention, issues general comments on various topics relevant to children that it believes States Parties should pay greater attention to. With General Comment 26, the Committee seeks to make clear to states that protecting children from violence inflicted on animals is essential to upholding children's rights.

Hobby hunters have no educational vocation, yet they proselytize all the way into primary schools. The hobby hunters' vision of nature has nothing to do with ethics, biology, ecology, or the protection of animals — quite the contrary!

In Switzerland, there is no association whose members are demonstrably involved year after year in thousands of legal violations — such as breaches of hunting law, poaching, arms smuggling, environmental offences, animal welfare violations, traffic offences, corruption, and many other criminal activities — as is the case with JagdSchweiz, to which the hobby hunters are affiliated.Virtually everything that is cruel, unnecessary, and heartless is promoted by JagdSchweiz, as a court in Bellinzona also confirms.

The explicit mention by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is an important step in ensuring that animal cruelty such as hunting is regarded as unacceptable.

Switzerland is obligated under human rights law to protect children from any form of violence.

If you would also like to support the cause, join us, the IG Wild beim Wild. We will support you so that your fight is heard.

Your signature

Added value:

• Open letter to the Federal Council: Our demand: No minors in hunting
• Children must be protected from the violence of hunting
• No to instruction by hobby hunters in schools
• Violence in schools – and hobby hunters?
• IG Wild beim Wild calls for a ban on the abuse of children by hobby hunters

More on this in the dossier: Psychology of hunting

References and studies:

1. Solothurn government defends animal cruelty
2. Amygdala and violence
3. Understanding the link between animal cruelty and family violence: The bioecological systems model
4. Childhood without conscience
5. Why some people become murderously evil
6. Violence as a source of pleasure or displeasure is associated with specific functional connectivity with the nucleus accumbens
7. People who are cruel to animals rarely stop there
8. Hunting fever
9. Serial Killers Have Under-Developed Brains, Says New Study
10. When children are cruel to animals – how parents should respond
11. Why Men Trophy Hunt: Showing Off and the Psychology of Shame
12. “Killing can be fun”
13. Hunting and Illegal Violence Against Humans
14. Understanding hunters better
15. Interview: Petra Klages with serial killer Frank Gust
16. Psychological and sociological differences between hobby hunters and non-hunters
17. The anatomy of human destructiveness
18. Has he lost the plot?
19. The passion of the hunter
20. Hunting and Illegal Violence Against Humans and Other Animals: Exploring the Relationship
21. Hunters and molesters
22. Ohio data confirms hunting/child abuse
23. Michigan stats confirm hunting,  child abuse
24. Preventing domestic violence through weapons
25. Cazadores deportivos – Mentes criminales?
26. Hunting and hunters: Psychoanalysis
27. A researcher finds a specific pattern in the brains of serial killers
28. The brain
29. Hobby hunters and their brain patterns
30. Dugré, J. R., Potvin, S., & Turecki, G. (2025). The dark sides of the brain: A systematic review and meta-analysis of neural correlates of human aggression. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.
31. Fritz, M., Pfabigan, D. M., & Lamm, C. (2023). Neurobiology of Aggression: Recent findings from structural and functional imaging. Current Psychiatry Reports.
32. Seidenbecher, T. et al. (2024). A case-control voxel- and surface-based morphometric study of amygdala volume in aggressive individuals. Brain Structure and Function.
33. Yildirim, B. O., & Derntl, B. (2019). Neural correlates of empathy deficits in violent offenders: Evidence from fMRI. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
34. Decety, J., Chen, C., Harenski, C., & Kiehl, K. A. (2017). Psychopathy and reduced amygdala response to others' pain: A neuroimaging investigation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology.
35. Fitzgerald, D. A. et al. (2020). Violence exposure and neural desensitization: Amygdala and insula responses under repeated affective stimuli. NeuroImage.
36. Anderson, N. E., Harenski, C. L., & Kiehl, K. A. (2018). Neural consequences of killing in combat: Amygdala modulation and emotional blunting. Neuropsychologia.
37. Porcelli, A. J. et al. (2022). Neural processing of emotional stimuli in slaughterhouse workers: Evidence for desensitization in limbic circuits. Psychoneuroendocrinology.
38. McNamee, R. L. et al. (2021). Affective numbing in high-violence occupations: Amygdala and insula attenuation during empathy tasks. Human Brain Mapping.
39. Luo, Q., & Yu, H. (2022). Moral decision-making and amygdala modulation during harm assessment involving humans and animals. Cerebral Cortex.
40. Bekoff, M., & Pierce, J. (2019). Empathy for animals and its neural substrates: A review of convergent evidence. Animal Sentience.