Whales: Their emerging right to life (Extract)

...... The case for the Inuit has been effectively presented by Nancy Doubleday. (See Doubleday, Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling: The Right of Inuit to Hunt Whales and Implications for International Environmental Law, 17 Den. J.INT'L L. & POL'Y 373 (1989)) ..... The conflict presented by Doubleday between indigenous peoples' subsistence whaling and what we have claimed is the whale's entitlement to life has so far been addressed only in the political arena. The United States, as we have seen, has taken a retrogressive position in favour of the Inuit, presumably on the basis that the Inuit of Alaska can vote whereas whales cannot. Leading environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth have been, if anything, even less forthcoming than U.S. politicians. Although these organizations claim to be champions of the rights of whales, when it comes to the bowhead whale - a truly endangered species - they are un-characteristically silent. Undoubtedly, the reason is their respect for the "rights" of indigenous people. These "political solutions" are thus not solutions at all; they are simply policies constructed upon expediency......

.....The Inuit's claims are at the expense of an overlooked voice - the anguished cry - of the sentient inhabitants of the deep. Doubleday would attempt to convince the reader that only one interest is at stake: that of the Inuit and their right to the "resource" of the great whales. But, in fact, there is a second interest: that of the great whales in the survival of their species or - even short of claims of survival - in their right to live. The whales find their own sustenance in the oceans; by what right do the Inuit expropriate the bodies of the whales to serve as their food?

So far we have not mentioned Doubleday's first argument: that Article 1(2) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights prohibits depriving a people of its own means of subsistence. There is force in this contention, even though we argue that the provision should not be taken literally. A literal reading of Article 1 (2) would allow, for instance, the continuation of human cannibalism. Or we might imagine a gang of thieves who steal food as they travel from town to town; surely, Article 1 (2) would not legitimize this means of sustenance. Instead, Article 1 (2) should be read to imply a caveat: "so long as other rights are not violated." If we have succeeded in this article in showing that whales have a right to life, Article 1 (2) should not be read as depriving them of that right.