Today, the world marks World Animal Day, a day founded in Berlin in 1925 by Heinrich Zimmermann to honor St Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals and ecology. The day has been coordinated by Naturewatch Foundation in the UK since 2003. This year's theme, "See the World Through Their Eyes," is a challenge to the way we govern and a call to empathize with animals. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
A recent incident at Jacaranda Grounds in Nairobi highlights the need for empathy. A photograph of a dog being hoisted high above a chanting crowd during the Linda Mwananchi rally circulated widely, showing the dog's ears pinned back, eyes wide with fear, and limbs rigid. This is not pride, but acute stress. Dogs hear up to 65,000 hertz, four times better than humans, and for him, a political rally is not celebration, but sensory torture. The owner may have meant love, but animal welfare is not measured by human intention, it is measured by the animal's experience.
Under Kenya's Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, it is an offence to cause unnecessary suffering or to terrify any animal. The Animal Welfare and Protection Bill of 2019, which has stalled in Parliament for five years, goes further and recognises animals as sentient beings capable of fear and distress. If we truly saw through the dog's eyes, we would have left him at home, safe, with water and quiet. Inclusion does not mean dragging the voiceless into our chaos.
The failure of empathy is not limited to pets. In Samburu and Baringo, during disarmament and banditry operations, cows and goats have been shot and left to rot in the sun. Seen through her eyes, she was not a combatant, but school fees, hospital bill, dowry, and dignity. She died terrified, without stunning, without veterinary oversight, in breach of Kenya's laws on humane slaughter. This is catastrophic leadership, breeding trauma, distrust, and intergenerational poverty, not peace.
Security governance without an animal welfare protocol is not professional policing. It violates Article 244 of the Constitution on humane policing. World Animal Day reminds us that sentience has no price tag. The donkey beaten until it collapses in Kajiado matters, the dairy cow dragged by a rope behind a matatu in Kiambu matters, and the layer chicken locked for 18 months in a battery cage in Mlolongo with no room to spread a wing, in violation of the Five Freedoms of the World Organisation for Animal Health, matters.
Kenya has made progress in protecting its iconic wildlife. Elephant poaching fell from 164 in 2014 to 16 in 2025, while the elephant population grew from 32,214 to 42,072. Kenya recorded zero rhino poaching in 2025 and has maintained that into 2026, with black rhinos now at 1,147, up from about 350 in the 1980s. However, other verified cases of animal cruelty persist, including the recent poisoning of 18 elephants in one ecosystem alone.
To lead is to protect those who cannot vote, cannot file a judicial review, and cannot shout at Jacaranda. They can only suffer. On World Animal Day, let us see the world through their eyes: the anxious dog at Jacaranda, the terrified cow in Samburu, and the elephant in Amboseli. Humane leadership requires counties to audit all slaughterhouses for humane handling and stunning, Parliament to pass the Animal Welfare and Protection Bill, 2019, and the National Police Service to ban killing of livestock in security operations except as a last resort to save human life.
Key points
- Constitutional and animal welfare principles have affirmed that killing livestock should never be part of security operations.
- The Animal Welfare and Protection Bill of 2019 recognises animals as sentient beings capable of fear and distress.
- All animals matter, not just the famous five, and sentience has no price tag.
