Understand the state of animal welfare in Southeast Asia, exposing legal loopholes, weak enforcement, and cultural norms that perpetuate cruelty.
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24 Mar 2026
7 Min Read
Eeshma Khawar (Student Writer), Nellie Chan (Editor)
Understand the state of animal welfare in Southeast Asia, exposing legal loopholes, weak enforcement, and cultural norms that perpetuate cruelty.
For most of human history, animals were regarded in law as property rather than as beings with rights of their own. Only in recent decades have governments begun extending broader legal protections against cruelty and exploitation, yet this progress remains precarious.
In August 2025, India’s Supreme Court made global headlines after issuing a contentious order directing that all stray dogs be rounded up and relocated to shelters—facilities that, in practice, are often insufficient or entirely non-existent. The directive, prompted by concerns over dog-bite and rabies cases, including incidents involving children, was widely criticised as both impractical and inhumane. A surge of national and international outrage soon followed, ultimately pressuring the court to revise it.
But this episode is more than a single misjudgment; it is a symptom of a deep-seated malaise. Even in the 21st century, an era of modernised welfare laws and heightened ethical awareness, animal abuse endures. Estimates suggest that somewhere in the world, an animal suffers abuse every minute. This forces us to confront a difficult question: if our laws are increasingly written in the language of compassion, why does reality still fall so far short?
What counts as abuse is often decided more by perception than principle, with some acts overlooked, or even quietly condoned. Across many communities, it is not uncommon to see children chasing stray cats with sticks or pelting stones at street dogs, behaviour sometimes encouraged under the guise of ‘cleaning up’ the streets. When we turn a blind eye to such cruelty, children learn that it is permissible, and the lessons in compassion they are taught at home or in school come quickly undone.
Abuse, however, is not limited to strays; livestock and wild animals suffer, too. In Vietnam, the frog meat industry is marred by deeply disturbing practices: workers reportedly immerse frogs in cold baths as an attempted stunning method—ineffective—before skinning and dismembering them while still conscious, using pincers and scissors. Although the Law on Animal Health (2015) recognises animal sentience, such cruelty continues unchecked. The country’s rampant dog and cat meat trade also bares the inadequacy of the system, with many of them stolen from the streets and sold for consumption—sometimes at the threat of violence towards their owners.
In Thailand, a different dimension of cruelty comes into focus, one underpinned by profit. Elephant riding and bathing, popular tourist activities involving nearly 2,800 captive elephants, generate hundreds of millions of US dollars each year, incentivising captive breeding as well as the poaching and cross-border trafficking of wild elephants. The industry has also proven dangerous for humans, with the death of a tourist during an elephant-bathing activity highlighting the risks. Whether through local trade or tourism, these examples show how financial and commercial drivers can fuel such abuse, undermining both ethical and legal protections.
Even where animal welfare laws appear on paper in Southeast Asia, their flaws are exposed by vague provisions, legal loopholes, and weak enforcement often render animals unprotected in practice. Thailand’s Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Provision of Animal Welfare Act—enacted in 2014 after more than a decade of development—illustrates this plainly. Although the act sets out formal safeguards, its broadly worded definitions of cruelty and welfare create uncertainty in implementation. Its scope is narrowed by Section 18, which exempts slaughter for food, religious slaughter, and animal fights, and by Section 21, which permits killing an animal in self‑defence—an allowance cited in cases to avoid prosecution. Where conduct clearly violates the law, which provides fines of up to 40,000 baht or two years’ imprisonment, most offenders receive suspended sentences. A rare departure from this trend occurred in 2016, when a man was jailed for 18 months after killing nine stray cats he had volunteered to care for.
Indonesia paints a similar picture, where legal protections are undermined not only by weak enforcement but also by the limited visibility of abuse. Law No. 41 of 2014 on Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Health provides for the prosecution of animal cruelty, yet enforcement remains suboptimal, with insufficient public awareness contributing to underreporting. When penalties are applied, they can be significant: a dog meat trader was sentenced to 10 months’ imprisonment and fined USD 10,000 in what was described as the country’s first such prosecution, while another trafficker received a record 17-month sentence. Yet these are exceptions. Most abuse goes unreported, uninvestigated, or unprosecuted; be it due to limited resources, institutional inertia, or cultural tolerance, the outcome is the same: impunity.
Where legal protections leave animals vulnerable, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) step in to defend them. In Thailand, the Soi Dog Foundation’s CNVR (Catch, Neuter, Vaccinate, Return) programme—one of the largest of its kind in the world—has reached over one million stray dogs and cats since its inception in 2003, resulting in an average 20 % decline in their populations across Greater Bangkok. Supporting this work are the foundation’s rescue and medical teams, which respond to thousands of animals in need each year, together with outreach programmes that educate communities on more humane care. In parallel, Watchdog Thailand Foundation bolsters enforcement efforts by raising public awareness of animal welfare laws, coordinating with authorities during investigations, and assisting with prosecutions of cruelty cases.
Closer to home, the Animal Welfare Act 2015 represented a meaningful reform for Malaysia, addressing longstanding gaps in the Animals Act 1953, which criminalised cruelty only in limited circumstances and carried relatively modest penalties. The 2015 Act broadened the definition of ‘animal’ to include any living creature other than a human being and established the Animal Welfare Board, charged with monitoring protection efforts, promoting public education on humane treatment, advising the government on welfare matters, and overseeing enforcement of the law. On paper, it signalled real progress, introducing increased penalties—fines of up to RM100,000 or imprisonment for up to three years—but in practice, enforcement has remained inconsistent:
Inconsistent enforcement not only falters the standing of the law but also frames societal perception of animal welfare, leaving cruelty insufficiently contested and often tacitly tolerated. The Penang Institute observes that animal cruelty in Malaysia stems from several root causes, foremost among them a lack of empathy and respect for other living beings; many continue to see animals as ‘mere objects devoid of emotion or rights,’ a mindset that can normalise mistreatment. Societal and cultural norms, reinforced by systemic practices that prioritise human benefit—including attitudes shaped by persistent patterns of production and consumption—further perpetuate cruelty.
This underscores the critical role of early education and public awareness in shifting deeply held perceptions. Research demonstrates that even brief educational interventions can have measurable impact: a 2024 study among elementary students in Kota Bharu, Kelantan found that a one‑day animal welfare programme effectively ‘promoted fundamental understanding and compassion towards animals.’ In line with these insights, the National Animal Welfare Strategic Plan 2021–2030, which, according to the Director‑General of the Department of Veterinary Services, seeks to instill these values from the early stages of education, also emphasises community outreach and engagement with all stakeholders, aiming to foster public support for humane practices and cultivate a culture that respects animal welfare.
The throughline across these cases—from India’s contested directives to Southeast Asia’s inconsistent enforcement, from community norms that normalise abuse to industries built on exploitation—is unmistakable: legal protections, no matter how carefully drafted, cannot safeguard animals if society has not fully internalised the values behind them. The endurance of cruelty is not merely a failure of law, but a failure of perception, priority, and will. Even so, these challenges coexist with glimmers of change: NGOs rescuing thousands, communities embracing more humane treatment, and children learning empathy through education. They remind us that lasting change does not happen by default; it demands institutions that enforce, communities that care, and individuals who refuse to look the other way. Only when these forces move together can animal welfare move from paper to practice.
Eeshma Khawar is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Biomedical Science (Honours) at Taylor’s University. Driven by scientific curiosity and a deep compassion for animal welfare, she shares her experiences to inspire mindful action and positive change.
