An Entertainment Abuses Article used with permission from All-Creatures.org

The National Link Coalition reports on a plea from Rinchen Chophel, Vice-Chair of the UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child, to South Africa to criminalize the practice of allowing children to participate in trophy hunting.

Link Cited in Call to Bar Children from Trophy Hunts
From December 2025 LINK-Letter, The National Link Coalition
December 2025

Images from Canva

Trophy animal hunting across the African continent has long been a big commercial enterprise, but its emotional impact on children who participate in these hunts is less understood. The United Nations' Committee on the Rights of the Child, which in 2023 declared that children should have a right to be protected from animal cruelty and domestic violence (See the October 2023 LINK-Letter), has been asked to expand this declaration to include trophy hunting.

South Africa’s Humane Education Trust is reporting in its November 2025 issue of Animal Voice that on Feb. 8, 2024, at the UN’s 95th Session of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, Vice-Chair Rinchen Chophel urged the South African delegation to criminalize the practice of allowing children to participate in trophy hunting.

The Committee, Chophel said, “has made a significant breakthrough. Various psychological studies on violence and animal abuse have shown that witnessing or participating in violence can severely impact children’s moral and psychological development, normalizing violence and conditioning lifelong negative behavioral patterns. The popular and societal acceptance and practice of child participation in animal trophy hunting is horrendous to say the least.”

Chophel has served as the Royal Government of Bhutan’s Executive Director of the National Commission for Women and Children and as Director General of the South Asia Initiative to End Violence Against Children. He was elected in 2020 to serve on the UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child, a body of 18 international experts that monitors the involvement of children in armed conflicts, the sale of children, child pornography, and child prostitution.

Animal Voice also reported that in response to the UN Committee’s 2023 declaration, Morocco is considering a change to its anti-cruelty laws to prohibit stray dogs from being shot in the streets. Draft Law 19.25, now under Parliamentary review, would impose mandatory prison sentences and/or fines for anyone who intentionally kills, tortures or injures a stray animal in any manner. However, other provisions of the draft, such as imposing fines on individuals who feed or care for stray animals, have drawn the wrath of animal welfare activists.

The Moroccan proposal reportedly came with strong input from FIFA, the world’s soccer organization. Morocco is slated to co-host the World Cup in 2030, along with Spain and Portugal. FIFA regulations state that any candidate nation wishing to stage a FIFA even must be compliant with international human rights laws. The UN statement brings animal welfare into the human rights domain through the Rights of the Child.

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Posted on All-Creatures.org: December 11, 2025
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