Report of the WG on the Universal Periodic Review on Finland

A/HRC/8/24

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36. The representative of the United Kingdom considered that the Government of Finland has played an active role in campaigning to make the Universal Periodic Review as open and rigorous as possible. The United Kingdom highlighted, as an example of best practice, Finland’s decision to maximize the value of UPR by integrating this process into its ongoing national report on human rights policy. The United Kingdom commended Finland for the significant role it has accorded in promoting and protecting human rights in Finland and around the world, and the excellent way it has involved civil society in drafting the national report for this review. The United Kingdom welcomed Finland’s strong advocacy of human rights in international forums and through its pursuit of a rights-based approach to development. The United Kingdom further welcomed Finland’s plans outlined in its national report to combat discrimination against minority and indigenous peoples and the efforts to strengthen and preserve the rights, language and culture of Sámi, as an indigenous people, and the Roma. However, the delegate of the United Kingdom noted the recommendation made by the United Nations mechanisms that Finland should ratify ILO Convention No. 169, and it encouraged it to fulfil its intention to draft and ratify an agreement on the rights of the Sámi to their traditional lands. The United Kingdom also welcomed the attempts to end discrimination against conscientious objectors through the reforms of the Non-Military Service Act. However, it encouraged Finland to go further in reducing the duration of non-military service and to establish parity between the length of non-military service and the average, rather than the longest possible, length of military service.

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38. (...) On the important question on the length of the Finnish non-military service that has recently been shortened and is now equal to the longest duration of military service, under the Military Services Act, the representative of Finland referred to the Finnish Constitutional Committee of Parliament which compared the burden of non-military and military services and the overall burden irrespective of the length was assessed to be more or less equal between the two forms of services and this is the reasoning behind the length of non-military service.

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Source: http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G08/136/37/PDF/G0813637.pdf?…