Ban on child abuse by recreational hunters
Longstanding research has shown that children can be severely harmed by witnessing violent animal abuse, such as during hunting or bullfighting.
The effects include a progressive erosion of empathy and a normalisation of violence, which has been shown to develop into violence against people and property. According to the law of cause and effect, violence always leads to counter-violence!
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has recognised these effects and issued recommendations that children should not be confronted with violent animal abuse.
The realisation that we protect children by protecting animals is groundbreaking.
These recommendations to various countries implicitly assume that children are affected by all forms of violent animal abuse because they have an empathetic relationship with another sentient being, regardless of species.
In May 2021, the world's leading institution for child protection, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, published a recommendation to the Tunisian government. It concerned the effects that shooting animals can have on a child. In the document, the committee called for the “elimination of societal violence against animals”. This was followed by a university study showing that the capacity for empathy in children who witness violence against animals partially regresses, and that over time these children may even come to view violence as normal.
The committee is fundamentally concerned about children who are forced to watch violence against animals – regardless of the species involved. It is therefore not a matter of a particular animal species, but of the acts themselves. Research has repeatedly shown that children feel compassion for all kinds of animals. This in turn means that children can be seriously harmed by being made to watch violence being inflicted on any living being, whatever it may be.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is the foundation for all of UNICEF's work. It is the most comprehensive statement of children's rights ever created, and the most widely ratified international human rights treaty in history.
JagdSchweiz association
Recreational hunting is a distinctly diffuse parallel world dominated by cult-like ideologies that have become widespread in our society. Unfortunately, it has already become commonplace for children, as part of nature experiences run by recreational hunters from JagdSchweiz, to be subjected to unnatural indoctrination. Animal-loving children are given a taste for weapons, ammunition and killing. Through the innocent love that children have for animals, attempts are made to draw them towards killing. They are allowed to shoot at animal mounts with crossbow, arrow and bow or firearm, or are sometimes even allowed to simply send wild animals to the eternal hunting grounds. During small knowledge tests on identifying animals or tracks, they are offered knives as prizes. In this playful way, the joy of killing, violence and the proper handling of weapons for a trophy are instilled in the next generation.
There is no association in Switzerland 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.
Recreational hunters have no educational calling, and yet they proselytise all the way into primary schools. The distorted vision that recreational hunters have of nature has nothing to do with biology, ecology or the protection of wild animals – quite the opposite! Recreational hunters kill out of passion. This means that neutrality cannot exist.
Members of the JagdSchweiz association have relationships with representatives of power in general. Furthermore, they make use of violence or other means suited to intimidation (scaremongering, propaganda lies, hunters' tall tales, etc.) in order to exert influence on politics, the media, public administration, the judiciary or the economy. Practically everything that is cruel, unnecessary and heartless is promoted by JagdSchweiz. The JagdSchweiz association primarily cultivates disrespect and a culture of violence – precisely the opposite of what a civilised person in our society should strive for.
There are no associations with legal status in Switzerland whose members are as deeply rooted in crime as those of JagdSchweiz.
IG Wild beim Wild calls on child protection organisations and policymakers to heed the recommendations of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and to support programmes that bring an end to violence against animals.
We call on people to imagine a world in which humanity lives in harmony with nature and in which wild animals and other living species are respected.