WSPA manual

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2007:

 

World Society for the Protection of Animals Members Manual

Looseleaf binder & CD formats - 348 pages. Annual membership fee: $80.00.

http://www.wspa-usa.org/pages/1948_becoming_a_u_s_member_society.cfm

 

 

As " Go forth and multiply! " is the first commandment of

survival for institutions and causes, as well as species, some of

the first publications of the earliest British and American humane

societies were essays encouraging sympathizers in distant places to

organize in a similar manner.

The 348-page WSPA Members Manual is probably the most

ambitious such effort yet. It draws liberally from many other humane

how-to publications, not always with acknowledgement. Each chapter

ends with an extensive list of further information sources.

The first portion of the WSPA Members Manual makes a laudable

yet perversely backward effort to inform animal advocates about the

history and philosophical antecedents of the cause.

Unfortunately, especially since the WSPA Members Manual is

meant to inspire and encourage humane work in developing nations,

the list of " Historical Milestones in the Animal Protection Movement "

begins in 1781, and includes mostly British developments. One

paragraph acknowledges the mid-19th century formation of the first

U.S. humane societies. Passing mentions are made of Germany,

Switzerland, and the European Union. Of the rest of the world,

there is just a note that " Colonial influences led to setting up many

SPCA-like organizations in Asia, South America, and Africa. "

This omits that the first humane societies in Britain were

hugely influenced and partially modeled after the pro-animal

teachings and temple animal sanctuaries that some of the founders had

encountered while doing military service in India.

The ANIMAL PEOPLE Chronology of Humane Progress by contrast

starts in 1300 B.C. and includes notice of developments in many

different parts of the world.

The WSPA Members Manual discussion of " Ethical and

Philosophical Views " and a " Summary of Philosophical Beliefs " focus

on European philosophers, with passing notice of some contemporary

Americans. Only after that does the manual acknowledge the

pro-animal teachings within major religions, giving Hinduism two

paragraphs and Buddhism just one--with about the same number of words

as a paragraph on Greek Orthodoxy.

After this intensively ethnocentric opening, the WSPA

Members Manual presents a series of glossaries of terms used in

humane work, explaining key concepts, such as the importance of

reducing the carrying capacity of urban habitat in trying to control

populations of street dogs and feral cats. Most of this material is

quite useful, and some of it does a fair job of presenting

conflicting perspectives on problematic issues.

But more oddness is ahead.

For example, there is considerable discussion of how to

choose a mission, after starting an organization. This is

completely inverse to how humane societies form. ANIMAL PEOPLE has

assisted in the formation of countless humane organizations, in all

parts of the world. Almost always, they start with the perception

of a job needing to be done, and grow from there into recognizing

that an organization must be created to do it. If a humane society

has to choose a mission, it is usually because the society is

already performing multiple missions, and realizes that it cannot do

them all well. The choice is deciding what to give up--and often

involves creating a new organization to take over the role that has

to be jettisoned.

The WSPA Members Manual also talks at length about forming

committees to do this and that, and about many other aspects of

management which simply do not occur in start-up organizations. Some

of this material may be relevant to humane societies that have

already grown to significant size, but most of it is quite

out-of-touch with the realities of small organizations, in which

very little can be delegated to anyone other than the founders.

The World Society for the Protection of Animals, as the WSPA

Members Manual explains, " was created in 1981 through the merger of

the World Federation for the Protection of Animals, founded in 1953,

and the International Society for the Protection of Animals, founded

in 1959. "

Both WFPA and ISPA were formed specifically to encourage

humane societies to go forth and multiply, after their numbers had

been woefully depleted throughout Europe and the Pacific Rim by

fascist repression and World War II.

After initial great success in western Europe, where humane

institutions were mostly rebuilt on battered but structurally sound

foundations, the WSPA parent societies and later WSPA itself

refocused on Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

 

Missionaries

 

Typically they worked with institutions begun by religious

missionaries, for example Alice Manning, whose estate indirectly

enabled the Massachusetts SPCA to found ISPA as a subsidiary. Not

surprisingly, WFPA, ISPA, and eventually WSPA followed the

missionary model. For decades they sent experts abroad to try to

start humane societies organized in emulation of British and American

societies, just as missionaries go forth to found churches.

The typical outcome was that the new humane societies would

last only as long as outside funding did, and then implode, having

utterly failed to develop local support. The political and economic

instability of many developing nations further sabotaged colonization

efforts--and so did a penchant for trying to work with corrupt or

ineffective governments, seeking quick-fix " victories " that could be

touted to western donors, instead of building a broad base of local

support.

The 1990s changed the paradigm.

First, the institutions ancestral to WSPA had been most

successful working in the technologically developed but war-blighted

nations of western Europe. The fall of Communism in eastern Europe

opened up a similar opportunity for WSPA and other outreach

organizations, helping to rebuild and restart organizations which

sometimes had existed at least in name since the 19th century.

Usually, though, the eastern European societies were

starting from scratch, with no resources or institutional

experience, even if they had old charters. Third World conditions

prevailed, from animal care to economic management--and often still

prevail, despite increasing animal advocacy.

Killing impounded dogs and cats by any cheap means, in order

to sell their fur, is no longer as openly done as in the Communist

era, but is still often reported.

Corruption in eastern European humane work is no longer as

flagrant as when the alleged human trafficker Wolfgang Ullrich raised

and stole as much as $45 million in funds donated to help animals,

mostly in Romania, before a German court sent him to prison. Yet

humane societies are still struggling with the Ullrich-era legacy.

Hangovers from it include bitterly disenchanted western donors;

rival organizations flamboyantly accusing each other of corruption;

restrictions on the export of dogs for adoption from some nations,

imposed because some dogs were allegedly covertly sold to

laboratories; and prohibitions on using veterinary drugs which might

also be used in " date rape, " and are still extensively used in human

trafficking.

The WSPA Members Manual does not discuss what to do about

working under such shadows. But it exists partly because some

members have found ways.

Just a few years ago a case could be made that the most

successful outcome of humane outreach to post-Communist eastern

Europe was the growth of some of the institutions begun to do it.

Among them were the Humane Society International division of the

Humane Society of the U.S., which moved out into the rest of the

world after initial outreach to Russia and Romania; the Austrian

multi-national animal charity Vier Pfoten; and the International

Companion Animal Welfare Conference.

But, scattered throughout eastern Europe, upstart groups

often begun by student activists five to 10 years ago have matured

with their leadership, developed constituencies, and--usually

beginning with little or no physical infrastructure--have become

world leaders in developing Internet-based campaigns. An

alphabetical roster would run from Animal Rights Croatia to VITA, of

Moscow, and would include at least one group in almost every former

Iron Curtain nation.

While WSPA and other multi-national animal charities focused

on eastern Europe, Internet-savvy young people also started an

unprecedented proliferation of humane organizations around the

economically booming Pacific Rim, with remarkably little outside

help. The International Fund for Animal Welfare had pursued the

missionary approach to building humane societies in several Pacific

Rim nations during the 1980s, but retrenched just before the boom

began.

Founded by former IFAW representative Jill Robinson, the

comparatively tiny Animals Asia Foundation has been the most

influential multinational humane society involved in the emergence of

indigenous Asian animal advocacy, but as an exemplar, showing

others how to do things, rather than trying to direct the action.

Finally, the Indian animal advocacy movement has emerged

into global influence, even though there is not, as yet, even one

genuinely national animal charity in India. The closest approach is

People for Animals, a constellation of loosely linked locally

autonomous animal charities begun by Maneka Gandhi in 1984. Through

the Asia for Animals conference series, begun in 2001, the Asian

Animal Protection Network online news and discussion group, begun in

1996, and increasing involvement in international programs, Indian

animal advocacy leaders have discovered that they have a wealth of

ideas and experience to share that often translate into models more

applicable to other developing nations than the teachings of the

western missionaries.

The organizational task ahead for WSPA, as " the world's

largest international federation of animal protection organizations,

with over 650 societies in more than 140 counties, " as the

introduction touts, is to make the transition from being a

missionary institution to becoming a genuinely globally

representative body.

This includes learning from the membership outside Britain

and the U.S.--and acknowledging that the humane movement did not

begin with the British Empire, much as British donors and

organizations have done to further it.

--Merritt Clifton

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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