 the seasoned teams user. I now have problems maybe in moving my slides, but we agreed that Professor Varaki will shout at me if something goes wrong, because I now only see my slides, but when we're through with the slides, then of course I will turn them off so that we can discuss a bit better. So the title, Neglective Animals and Dehumanization of People in War, question mark stemmed actually from a recent story I experienced with students of the Freie University, Berlin, because for a seminar I suggested a student paper on the fate of non-human animals in Gaza. And I use the term non-human animals because it's actually quite common among animal lawyers. We speak of non-human animals, just as we speak of human animals to highlight that humans after all are also animals as already Charles Darwin has shown. But a group of students from Freie University thought that this term would insult Palestinian students. And they wrote me an email. So the question is, does such a vocabulary and does the concern for animals, non-human animals, more generally, does this concern debase humans? Is there a kind of competition of victims or is the neglect of animals and the neglect of humans rather two sides of the same coin? That's the question of today. I'm trying to move my slides, but I can't for some reason I'm stuck. What am I supposed to do now? Please, I'm sorry for that, please. Perhaps try- Did it move now? Are you seeing the slides too now? Okay, one more. So actually here, you all know that we count more than 3000 human deaths in Gaza up to this day and around 70,000 injured. There is rampant hunger. And this is of course of utmost concern. And so it's in no way my intention to belittle or relativize this. Quite to the contrary, I hope it will come out that this is the opposite. On the slide, you see that there were, there are or were quite a lot of animals in Gaza. For example, donkeys are widely used still. And donkeys have also been victims or also victims. And again, this is a no way to divert any attention from the human suffering, but the basic claim of my talk will be that actually there is no or no inevitable conflict. In order to safeguard humanity in war, we should also care for animals. That's my claim. Because I hope you see the slide now, the new slide of the trenches. Animals, okay, good. Animals are the unknown victim of armed conflict. And additionally, we often observe a parallel between violence committed against non-human animals and against human animals. So I'm just using the term. For example, with regard to the Ukraine war, I just read a report that was on 13th January in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about sexual violence committed by Russians in Ukraine. And this report mentioned more in passing because the report was about rapes. It mentioned the following facts of a village in Eastern Ukraine. First, the Russians shot all chicken and therefore the hidden woman could eat the chicken fodder. Next, the Russians chased roaming dogs, put them in a shed and set it on fire. Third, the women in the house was afraid of being raped. That's just one story. So the starting point of the research, of my research is the observation that actually everybody suffers in war and also all animals are negatively affected. This starts with domestic animals. Here you see a cat in the Ukrainian trenches and it's not only for keeping up the morals of the soldiers but apparently cats perform a very useful function, chasing and eating mice because there is indeed the danger that the mice nibble the cables and cause disruption of communication and currency. But there are also of course a much smaller group of animals used by the army. Here on the slide, I hope you see a British army dog captured by the Taliban. That's an old picture. Another group of animals suffering is wildlife, of course. Here you see a picture of the oil spill in the Gulf War of 1991. That was the Security Council authorized action under chapter seven in response to the invasion in Kuwait. And in this war, Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader had released 11 million barrels of oil and caused the biggest oil spill in history. Another group of animals here again from the Ukrainian war, refugees carrying their pets. I had not seen any such pictures in previous wars. I think it shows a changed attitude towards the pets that they were transported into the EU and the EU also relaxed quarantine requirements. Another group of animals, zoo elements, animals. Here you see the zoo of Kiev where an elephant is anxious about the noise of the shelling. And generally speaking zoo animals in armed conflict, they have to be put down, euthanized, if they cannot be evacuated. Because it's of course too dangerous that a bomb drops on the lion cage and then the animals roam around. Here a farm in Ukraine, an abandoned farm. So under the law of armed conflict as it stands, only agricultural animals' livestock is mentioned at all and is under very narrow conditions protected but only under the heading of prohibition of starvation. And it is prohibited to destroy livestock only if this livestock is indispensable for the survival of the civilian population. And moreover, there is a derogation. Livestock may be destroyed where required by imperative military necessity. So this rule is purely anthropocentric and it does not take into account animal sentience. There is also the crime of pillaging both in Ajax such as the Ukraine war and in Ajax. There is also an ICC case, International Criminal Court case Katanga which specifically mentioned the pillaging of livestock. So in the face of this neglect of animals against the almost complete silence of IHL or of the law of armed conflict on animals, I think that animals need to be put on the legal map in the first place. So the first research objective of the project I pursued together with Jerome deontine and others, the first object was to make visible animals in the law of armed conflict as it stands through a proper or in any case, through a defensible interpretation of the law. And I give you just two examples. First examples, I think that as lawyers we can clarify that animals are objects in the sense of the Geneva conventions and protocols. Although of course historically, the drafters had innate non-living objects in mind. But when we say that also animals are objects, this then also means that animals are presumptively civilian objects and that they enjoy protection as civilian objects. And this then means that animals may not be targeted except when they qualify as a military objective which is rare in practice or when the harm constitutes proportionate incidental damage. So my argument would be that in warfare, animals should be treated as sentient beings that experience pain, suffering and distress. And you can consult for this term, for this legal qualification as a sentient being. There is the provision in article 13 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union which has introduced this term. So if we say that animals are civilian objects and that they are more over sentient, then this means that in a proportionality assessment, belligerents should grant animals a value in their own right. And as a consequence, not all animal interests should be automatically be subordinated to every trivial human interest. And of course the proportionality assessment would have to vary in the light of the differing value attributed to animals in different societies. However, I think we can note a worldwide trend to give more concern to animals as sentient beings and that would have to be factored in. And I think that this also goes then for the application of the principles of precaution and for the due diligence of an occupying power. I would say that such progressive interpretation can be soundly performed, especially in the form of so-called systemic interpretation. Actually there is a, I thought there was a typo on the slide but I think it's correct, article 31, section three, letter C, so there is a typo, sorry, of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties under which there shall be taken into account any relevant rules of international law applicable in the relations between the parties and other relevant rules of international law that would factor into the interpretation of the rules on armed conflict are notably the rules on the environment to which I will return in a minute. Also, in order to fill gaps, we can and I think we should also resort to the Martens clause because respect for animal sentience and welfare is nowadays a social value, a social value that already forms part of the principles of humanity and the dictates of the public conscience as the Martens clause puts it. I can give you two examples for such a progressive interpretation of the law of armed conflict. So here you see Agent Orange, sprayed over Vietnam. This event, as you know, has given rise to the very narrow provisions of two provisions in the additional protocol one who were adopted in the aftermath of this ecological catastrophe, but these provisions are so narrow that they basically never apply. They prohibit only cumulatively widespread and long-term and severe damage to the environment. So in the commentaries, you can read that this means that the damage must affect 100 square kilometers or more and must last 30 years or more and must make life impossible, basically. So it's very narrow. But I submit that these criteria can be interpreted more broadly. So that the threshold to widespread long-term and severe damage to the environment, including, of course, the animals as part of the environment, this threshold may today be reached more easily after all 50 years after these provisions of the additional protocol were adopted. Another example, I already alluded to that. Today, I think it's pretty obvious that animals must also be seen as forming part of the environment and actually the International Law Commission in its commentary to its fairly recent principles on the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts also has clarified this. And animals also includes domesticated animals and not only wild animals as part of the environment. My second example for a suggested progressive interpretation of IHL is that animals could be seen as specially protected objects under the cultural paradigm. The rules of armed conflict could be interpreted in light of the 1954 convention on the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict. And then we could argue that a cultural value may also attach to certain animals which are employed by humans for traditional food or sports or for religious purposes or which otherwise enjoy some holy statues. And one could also argue that animals that are at the brink of extinction also have a significant value for humanity as a whole. And this is then, I would argue, a cultural value in a broader sense. Third example on the slide on the bottom for a progressive interpretation of the laws of armed conflict, I think we should also integrate with this systemic integration principle, integrate international criminal law. There is also law against wildlife trafficking. For example, the CITES Convention, Convention on International Trade on a Vendangered Species. There is also the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. We also need to harmonize with the Security Council resolutions that had been adopted with regard to CAR, Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of Congo and with General Assembly resolutions on wildlife trafficking as a threat to the peace. The ICJ has also found that the rules on pillage and plunder are applicable to wildlife. Yeah, so these are examples of how to progressively interpret the law, but there are, of course, also more radical ideas. Much more radical would be to qualify animals, not as objects or as part of the environment, but as persons, presumably part of the civilian person, population, or as part of the armed forces as combatants. And then they could potentially also be bearer of rights. Here on the picture you see a scene in the course of the West American War against Terror. There was this joint special operation that trapped the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, with help of a military trained Belgian Malinois named Conan. Conan chased the terrorists through a tunnel and when al-Baghdadi detonated his suicide vest, the military dog was lightly wounded. And announcing this achievement, you, as President Trump stated, nobody was even hurt, I quote, Trump. Our canine, as they call it, I call it a dog, a beautiful dog, a talented dog, was injured and brought back. And some weeks later, the president personally awarded the hero dog a medal and certificate in the ceremony in the Rose Garden. So legally speaking, such practices do not necessarily suggest that military animals should be qualified as combatants. I would rather argue that they should not because they do not need the combat privilege because they will anyway be not tried before a criminal court, but they would rather pay a high price because they could then lawfully be targeted and killed. So what are the legal consequences of such an evolutionary reading of IHL? First of all, animal sentience must factor into all IHL principles and procedures. And I would also argue that the prohibition of unnecessary suffering also applies to animals. Second, the non-use of animals should be the default rule. Belligerence should not use animals to carry out functions related to the conduct of hostilities, except when it's absolutely necessary for certain tasks such as searching, rescuing, or transporting wounded soldiers. And third, eco-centric protected zones for particularly vulnerable areas or for environmental hotspots could and should be created by agreement and then should of course also be respected. My main argument actually against qualifying animals as persons, but for the default rule of not using animals in armed conflict at all is what is inscribed on this war memorial in London. They had no choice. To conclude, I would like to return to my initial question. The question is, does kind of upgrading of animals downgrade humans? This might be a real danger in armed conflict because here a frequent rhetoric is to treat the enemy group as less than fully human. And this is called dehumanization. It's a full-fledged area of research in political science. Here you see the root-ledge handbook of dehumanization. Of course, in dehumanization, no one denies that members of the out-group don't belong to the human species. So, or doesn't deny that they belong. So dehumanization is not literally a matter of denying that someone is not a homo sapiens. Rather, dehumanization involves viewing others in a way that deny them what are seen as distinctly human qualities because animals are widely seen as lacking some more refined emotions and traits. For example, animals lack guilt, animals lack self-restraint, and then dehumanized human groups are seen as also lacking these supposedly distinctly human qualities but are seen as being driven by some more basic impulses that we share with animals. And then when the others, the other, is viewed as lacking these core capacities, then this makes them also appear less sensitive to pain, that makes them appear more dangerous, uncontrollable, and therefore then in need of severe and coercive forms of punishment that they can only be governed and disciplined by force. And this view, this strategy, this rhetoric strategies, of course, is serious moral problem. And therefore it is deeply problematic and disturbing that even under the immediate impression and shock of the horrible massacres of 7th October, the Israeli defense minister, Galant, infamously declared on 9th October, I quote, Galant, we are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly, end of the quote. Fortunately, there was a strong pushback against such language. Also at his recent visit to Jerusalem, the US American secretary of state, Blinken stated, I quote, Blinken, Israelis were dehumanized in the most horrific way on October 7th. The hostages have been dehumanized every day since but that cannot be a license to dehumanize others. End of quote, Blinken. Against these deeply troubling implications of a dehumanizing language, it's totally unhelpful when a commentator in the New York Times here, probably you can't read it on the slide, here it's an opinion piece of 2nd February entitled, Understanding the Middle East through the Animal Kingdom. And in this essay, the author compares the United States to an old lion and Iran to a parasitoid wasp. That's, as I said, less than helpful. So to recap, dehumanization seeks to sanitize atrocities and must be strongly resisted and refuted. However, I think that this sanitizing, this whitewashing only works on the premise that there is indeed a strict hierarchy between humans on top and animals below. Psychological research has shown that multiple psychological mechanisms link negative attitudes towards animals to the dehumanization of human outgroups. The more children are taught to place the human above the animal, the more they dehumanize, for example, racial minorities. Conversely, a humane education regarding animals that emphasizes the interspecies affinities and the solidarities. Such an education encourages greater empathy and also pro-social attitudes towards other humans. So in short, overvaluing humans, relativity non-humans creates problems and it creates problems not only for the animals but also for other humans. So put it again differently, I think that if also the law would show more concern for animals, then this would flatten the moral and legal hierarchy that currently exists between non-human animals and human animals. And it would also unmask the speciesist rhetoric used by people like the Israeli defense minister and it would also blunt the dehumanization strategy. In result, a better protection of animals in war times might help to reduce everyone's suffering in war. And that's why animals need to be put on the map of the laws of war. And that's what we did in that book that I take the liberty to show on the slide. And that's it. These are my slides and now we can try to get rid of them, which I'm afraid maybe I can't do myself. Okay, thank you very much.