Guest guest Posted June 15, 2006 Report Share Posted June 15, 2006 Sri Lanka drafts bill for animal welfare Tuesday, June 13, 2006 ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka June 13, Colombo: The Law Commission has drafted a bill on establishing an Animal Welfare Authority in Sri Lanka. The draft bill has now been presented to the President for his perusal and further action. The bill proposes revolutionary changes to the 98-year-old archaic law, the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Ordinance No. 13, 1907), introduced during the British colonial period to prevent cruelty to animals. The Authority will have animal welfare inspectors working under it to enforce the law. Under the laws anyone can lodge a complaint, even against a neighbour, if he or she cruelly treats an animal. An important feature of the bill is that it recognizes that a person who is in charge of an animal owes the animal a duty of care. Although killing animals for food is not prohibited, killing an animal in an unnecessarily cruel manner is prohibited. An animal who is the victim of an offence or a possible offence could be placed in protective custody on a court order, according to the bill. http://www.colombopage.com/archive/June13110908SL.html ...................... Sri Lanka aims to protect animals as human misery continues Jun 14, 2006 Annabel Lee Stanley After 98 years, the Sri Lanka Law Commission has drafted a bill to revise its laws on animal cruelty. The bill proposes to establish an Animal Welfare Authority which will enforce the prohibition of unnecessary cruelty against animals. In addition, under the new law, the court will have the right to attain protective custody of the animals who are victims of cruelty by their own caretakers. Although this is a seen as a progressive move for Sri Lanka, human rights organizations and activists are left wondering when people living in Sri Lanka will be guaranteed the same level of protection. According to statistics released by the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Sri Lanka has nearly 40,000 child prostitutes. More than half of these children are boys who are used by Western pedophile sex tourists and the remaining are children from rural areas used by crime groups to prostitute to pedophiles. In addition, more than 100,000 children are working as domestic aides. Such statistics have raised major concerns of child abuse and child labor in Sri Lanka on an international level. While child rights organizations have labeled Sri Lanka as a “pedophile paradiseâ€, the country had joined in the celebrations against child labor however attested that there are only 2000 active child prostitutes. According to the National Child Protection Authority, the government needs to take greater strides to improve public awareness, poverty elimination among sensitive social groups and strict implementation of legal regulations in order to eliminate child abuse and labour. Some analysts state that child rights and poverty in rural areas are constantly overshadowed by the country’s priorities to wage war against the rebel group in the North and East of Sri Lanka. For more than 20 years, Sri Lanka has been engaged in a war that has killed more than 80,000 civilians in order to put down an ethnic Tamil uprising against human rights violations and discriminations. http://www.tamileelamnews.com/news/publish/tns_5441.shtml Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.