The+State+of+Israel+Position+Paper+(1st+draft)

By Raquel Martinez

Committee: International Labor Organization Topic: Animal trafficking Country: The State of Israel

Wildlife trade is the trading and exploiting of the animals. This trading is illegal, it´s against national and international laws. Although The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which is the largest and the most important organization that is fighting to avoid this problem, is working on this issue trying to solve it, wildlife trade is still happening in most of the countries of the world. This problem affects Israel because many species are threatened by the reduction of their habitats and the high hunting level. Over the years Israel has worked intensively and has participated in global and regional programs, and its contribution its helping the different international organizations. Israel believes that participating on these type of organizations is a good way to put end to animal trafficking.

The Israeli Knessett, which is the legislature of Israel, considered the prohibition of the production and trade in fur as a good way to stop animal trafficking in the country. The 24th of October, 2010, Israel's Ministerial Legislation Committe approved this law, that was started by the Ministry of Environmental Protection. According to this new law, all wildlife will be considered protected wildlife and only a few species will be excluded. It only will be possible to damage wildlife if the reasons for doing it coincide with the specific permits defined by the law ,for example, if it is for the prevention of threats from wildlife to people. This law also includes that no one can import fur from foreign countries, to try to reduce animal trafficking in other countries too. Israel is the first country to prohibit to trade with fur, but, this wildlife protection law isn't sufficient for the protection of animals.

Although Israel is improving on this problem, there are other countries which still remain in the same situation and let animal trafficking to exist. For example, in 2004, The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora reported that over 4000 elephants were illegally killed each year in the African Range States and nowadays ,in Japan, people are killing whales just for a commercial interest. Due to these reasons, Israel is also working internationally as a member of many of the United Nations agencies like the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The country participates in United Nations conferences and contributes with its national reports, just to share the methods that people in Israel are following with the other countries and try to reach an agreement to reduce animal trafficking in the world, like the director of the Anti-Fur Coalition said: "We hope that Israel will inspire other countries and they too will propose comparable bills throughout the world".

In Israel, there are two different animal welfare groups. One is called the International Anti-Fur Coalition and the other one is called Let The Animals Live. These two groups have been reported people's opinion about animal trafficking and the results were outstanding. When people in Israel were asked this question: "Do you find it moral to kill animals if they are killed only for their fur?", the 86% of the population were against the killing of animals just to obtain fur, and when they were asked this other one: "Would you support a bill to ban the trade of fur in Israel?” The 79% were in favor of the ban. According to these surveys, the stadistics show us that most of the Israel's population supports the idea of the new law and is going to do their best to try to solve this problem

Israel's conclusion is that, to solve the problem of animal trafficking, each country needs to establish its own laws against the hunting and killing of animals to tarde with them illegally. From these laws, each country will improve and little by little the issue is going to be reduced, but, to make the process quicker, it is a good idea to have international conferences where all the ideas to solve it are exposed and all the countries can work together to reach an agreement about this serious problem. Israel thinks that if these steps are followed, animal trafficking can disappear in several years. Acording to all the things that have been explained about Israel position about the topic and how other countries are also improving on this, I think that this problem can be solved if each of us don't buy any fur products, or products that come from the animals and are not necessary to survive. That way, we will decrease the business of the illegal trade of animals and it will disappear in a long time.

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