Editorial

With this June issue of CO-Update e-newsletter we will start our new Spanish language Informe-OC, due out (hopefully) within the next week. If you are interested in helping with translations, then please contact us. Also, if you know of people who might be interested in receiving the Spanish version, then please let them or us know. We hope that Informe-OC will help to provide more information for the Spanish speaking world, especially for CO groups in Latin America.

We are still looking for volunteers for regular translation of CO-Update into German and French.

This issue has a variety of reports on quite different developments. In Europe, the trend to end conscription continues, with Macedonia being the most recent country to abolish conscription. Unnoticed by many, the end of conscription often includes the end of the right to conscientious objection, as this right was often only granted to conscripts, and not to those who joined the military as volunteers.

This is where European CO activists will have a lot to learn from the experience of CO and counter-recruitment work in the United States, which was the focus of International Conscientious Objectors' Day 2006 (see the report on Operation Refuse War).

WRI's conference Globalising Nonviolence will be the next opportunity also for CO activists to discuss strategies for the right to refuse to kill (see below).