The genesis of this project is the 3rd African Animal Welfare conference held in 2019 in Addis Ababa which was hosted by the Africa Network for Animal Welfare (ANAW) the African Union Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Government of Ethiopia.

UN Member States to support the adoption of a resolution on “Animal welfare – Environment – Sustainable Development Nexus’’ at the fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-5.2) taking place from 28th February to 2nd March 2022. This would allow the consideration of animal welfare as a valuable policy concern in relation to the UNEP’s Medium Term Strategy 2022-2025 entitled “For People and Planet”.

The main ask is for report bringing out a thorough analysis of the nexus between animal welfare, the environment and sustainable development

To pass a resolution at UNEA, a simple majority of the 193 UNEA Member States is required. This means at least 97 Member States have to support the Resolution.

UNEA is composed of environmental ministers.

UNEA also has a subsidiary inter-sessional body, the Committee of Permanent Representatives (CPR), which consists of countries’ accredited permanent representatives to UNEP.

The resolution is led by Ghana and supported by six other Member States: Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Pakistan.

The proposed resolution does not seek to integrate animal welfare into UNEP’s mandate but rather aims for a better integrated understanding of how the improvement or lack of animal welfare impacts on the drivers of the three interconnected environmental crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. The resolution envisages that such an enhanced understanding can inform and strengthen UNEP’s ability to implement its current mandate as outlined in the Medium Term Strategy (MTS) and Programme of Work (PoW).

Closely related to this, as referenced in the second preambular paragraph of the draft resolution, the proposed resolution aims to contribute to UNEP’s mandate to promote a strong science-policy interface, building on existing international instruments, assessments, panels and information networks.

While the words animal welfare do not appear in the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Agenda envisages a world in which humanity lives in harmony with nature and in which wildlife and other species are protected.

Moreover, the 2019 Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR) highlighted animal welfare as a key issue to be specifically addressed by the UN system in relation to the need to strengthen action to achieve the SDGs.