Right to Refuse to Kill

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War Resisters' International's programme The Right to Refuse to Kill combines a wide range of activities to support conscientious objectors individually, as well as organised groups and movements for conscientious objection.

Our main publications are CO-Alerts (advocacy alerts sent out whenever a conscientious objector is prosecuted) and CO-Updates (a bimonthly look at developments in conscientious objection around the world).

We maintain the CO Guide - A Conscientious Objector's Guide to the International Human Rights System, which can help COs to challenge their own governments, and protect themselves from human rights abuses.

Information about how nation states treat conscientious objectors can be found in our World Survey of Conscientious Objection and recruitment.

More info on the programme is available here.

On 22 September, a Goranboy court jailed 22-year-old Jehovah's Witness Seymur Mammadov for nine months for refusing compulsory military service on conscientious grounds. On 25 July – two days after his 18th birthday – officers seized conscientious objector Royal Karimov and forcibly took him to a military unit in Ganca, where he is still held.

Israel will be holding parliamentary elections in November, and we need to make sure our Prime Minister and parliamentary candidates for office understand the occupation needs to end NOW. We will not accept nor participate in human rights violations. We have written the following statement and we need your help to make sure it reaches these Israeli politicians.

An IDF disciplinary body sentenced 18-year-old Israeli conscientious objector Shahar Schwartz to 10 days in military prison on Monday over his refusal to serve in the army. Schwartz, who graduated from high school this year, was jailed after appearing before the IDF’s conscientious objectors committee where he declared his intention to refuse service due to Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians.

Dear conscientious objectors to military service, today we mark our CO day while war is being waged.

As the war with Ukraine began, the notion of refusing military service in Russia has become especially topical. Before the war, most conscripts and their relatives did not associate military service as conscripts with actual warfare. Conscription appeared to be something akin to a sports camp with elements of military training.

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