See also Conscientious objection and Conscription.
The status of conscientious objectors varies in various countries throughout the world.
Conscientious objection in Britain
Britain recognized the right not to fight in the 17th century following problems with attempting to force Quakers into military service. The Militia Ballot Act allowed Quakers to be excluded from military service. it then ceased to be a major issue, since Britain's armed services were mostly all-volunteer forces - though press gangs took sailors for the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic War.
A more general right to refuse was not introduced until during WW I, with the introduction of universal male conscription by the Military Service Act of May 1916. The Act allowed for objectors to serve their country in non-combatant roles (alternate service) if they could convince a tribunal of the quality of their objection. Around 16,000 men were recorded as conscientious objectors. 7,000 were granted non-combatant duties, but 3,000 were sent to special labour camps. Around 1,000 men refused any form of service; they were forced into the army and forty-one of them were sentenced to death and only reprieved by government intervention.
Actual exemption might involve appearing before Tribunals. 8,608 appeared before them; over 4,500 went sent to do work of national importance such as farming. However, 528 were sentenced to severe penalties. This included 17 who were sentenced to death (afterwards commuted), 142 to life imprisonment, three to 50 years' imprisonment, four to 40 years and 57 to 25 years. Conditions were made very hard for the conscientious objectors and sixty-nine of them died in prison.
Note that Britain's 1916 conscription law did not apply to Ireland - but see Conscription Crisis of 1918 (Ireland). The various parts of the Empire and Commonwealth had their own rules.
After the war, there was some revulsion at the way the rules had been applied, and at the arbitrary rules applied by one of them. In A. J. Cronin's 1935 novel The Stars Look Down, there is the following exchange:
- "Come now... You're a Christian, aren't you? There's nothing in the Christian religion which prevents lawful killing in the service of your country."
- "There's no such thing as lawful killing...
- "I haven't got any religion very much, not religion in your sense. But you talk about Christianity, the religion of Christ. Well, I can't imagine Jesus Christ taking a bayonette in His hands and sticking it into the stomach of a German soldier or an English soldier either for that matter. I can't imagine Jesus Christ sitting behind an English machine gun or a German machine gun mowing down dozens of perfectly guiltless men."
He goes to jail, as do others with a more conventionally religious view. This is described as one of the harsher tribunals, but within the range of actual events.
In World War II following the National Service (Armed Forces) Act of 1939 there were around 61,000 conscientious objectors in Britain. As in World War I individuals had to face a tribunal, the tribunal could grant full exemption, conditional exemption on alternate service, exemption from combatant duties, or dismiss the objection. An individual could appeal to special appeal tribunals which were headed by a judge. Tests were much less harsh - if you were not a member of the Quakers or some similar pacifist church, it was generally enough to say that you objected to "warfare as a means of settling international disputes", a phrase from the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928.
Of the 61,000 only 3,000 were given complete exemption and 18,000 were dismissed as false claimants. Of those that undertook military service almost 7,000 joined the Non-Combatant Corps, set up in mid-1940; its companies worked in the medical services or any military project not requiring the handling of "material of an aggressive nature". Around 450 NCC members worked in bomb disposal. About 5,500 objectors were imprisoned, charged with offences relating to their unrecognized objection. A further 1,000 were court-martialled and sent to military prisons.
Britain retained conscription as National Service until 1960. The use of only volunteer soldiers was hoped to remove the need to consider conscientious objectors. The concept was returned into active law in 1998 when Britain accepted the principles of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Conscientious objection in Spain
The Spanish Constitution of 1978 acknowledged conscientious objectors. The Spanish parliament established a longer service (Prestación Social Sustitoria) as an alternative to the Army. In spite of this, a strong movement appeared that refused both services. The Red Cross was the only important organization employing objectors. Because of this, the waiting lists for the PSS were long, especially in areas like Navarre, where pacifism, Basque nationalism and a low unemployment rate discouraged young males from the army. Tens of insumisos (non-submittants) publicly refused the PSS or deserted the Army. Several civilians denounced themselves as encouraging non-submission. The government feared popular reaction, reduced the service time and substituted jail punishments by administrative ones like inadmittability to public service.
Fronting the decreasing birth rate and the popular opposition to the army, the Spanish government tried to modernize the model carried from the Franco era, professionalizing it. The new army tried to provide an education for civilian life and participated in peace operations in Bosnia.
In spite of this, the number of professional recruits is not covering the expectations of the Ministry of Defence, and there are plans to recruit foreigners from Spanish America.
Conscientious objection in East Germany
- Main article: Conscientious objection in East Germany
Conscientious objection in Finland
In Finland, the first act providing for a peacetime only alternative to compulsory military service was passed in 1931, enabling a conscientious objector to opt for civilian service (Finnish siviilipalvelus). The act was dubbed "Lex Pekurinen" after Arndt Pekurinen, a famous pacifist who was later, in 1941, executed for refusing to bear arms in wartime.
For many decades, the civilian service remained unpopular and difficult to choose. Refusing military service would have been very strongly discouraged by all state officials, and getting accepted as a conscientious objector required a trial by an examination board, whose judgement was often very harsh and strongly biased towards military service. These boards included army officers and clergy. A typical hypothetical presented to the examinee was "If a group of men threatened to beat your girlfriend up, would you try to stop them?".
The examinations were abolished in the 1980s, and today a conscientious objector is only required to check a box in the draft form and state whether his reasons are religious or ethical. Some social stigma still attaches to conscientious objection, and the military, which is responsible for the draft, does not much advertise the option.
The civilian service of conscientious objectors lasts 395 days, thirty days longer than the longest military service (365 days) and over twice as long as the shortest and most common (180 days). Of this time, the first four weeks are spent in training, which mostly consists of general-purpose lectures on various topics. The first three weeks of the training are held at the Lapinjärvi Educational Center, and the fourth week is a free vacation.
The main 12-month period of service can be performed in any institution that is both non-profit and beneficial to the society. Examples include state bureaus, schools, universities, hospitals, and independent non-profit organisations such as Amnesty International. Institutions wishing to accept conscientious objectors must comply with rules laid down by the Finnish Ministry of Labour.
From the state's point of view, conscientious objectors are subject to the same laws as military enlisted men, with the same rights and the same obligations. How the service is handled in practice depends on the place of service, but a typical service consists of a common 40-hour week in the institution.
Some 2,500 men opt for the civilian service every year.
Men who refuse both the military and the civilian services are known as total objectors (Finnish totaalikieltäytyjä). Total objectors are sentenced to a prison term equal to half their remaining service. In 2002, some 70 men were convicted as total objectors. It is usual for total objectors to cite in their defence the European Convention on Human Rights, which bans forced labour except in emergencies and wartime, as well as the arguably discriminatory and unconstitutional exemption from military service granted to Jehovah's Witnesses.
Amnesty International considers the excessive length, as compared to military service, of the civilian service to be punitive and accordingly classifies Finnish total objectors as prisoners of conscience. In one recent case, a total objector has sought asylum from another country, Belgium. While asylum was eventually not granted, he could not be extradited because his acts were not punishable under the Belgian criminal code.
Other Countries
Separate articles on conscription and the rights of objectors exist for Australia, Canada in WW1 and WW2, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Ireland in 1918, Israel, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa,Singapore, Taiwan, and the United States. Also the New York Draft Riots of 1863.
Note that this is just a list of what the Wikipedia has, based on the "Category:Conscription" page. Other countries should undoubtedly be added, but this depends on someone writing an article based on knowledge of the subject. The article on Conscription has a partial list of countries with mandatory military service.
The situation today
Conscientious objection exists since the incorporation of forced military service but was not officially recognized until the twentieth century, when it was gradually recognized as a fundamental human right as a part of the freedom of conscience.
Despite the fact that international institutions like the United Nations (UN) or the Council of Europe (CoE) regard and promote conscientious objection as a human right, as of 2004, it still does not have a legal basis in most countries. Among the roughly one-hundred countries that have conscription, only thirty countries have some legal provisions, 25 of them in Europe. In Europe, most countries with conscription more or less fulfill international guidelines on conscientious objection legislation (except for Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Finland and Russia) today. In many countries outside Europe, especially in armed conflict areas (Israel/Palestine, DR Congo), conscientious objection is punished severely.
While conscientious objectors - or short CO's - used to be seen as deserters, traitors, cowards, slackers or simply un-patriotic, their image has changed drastically in the Western world in past decades. Especially in Europe, where objectors usually serve an alternative civilian service are regarded as making an equally important contribution to society as conscripts. Parallel to that, the number of objectors has risen significantly, too: E.g. in Germany, where conscientious objection is a constitutional right, from less than one percent of all eligible men to more than fifty percent in 2003.