Serbia

Serbian men of draft age living abroad are trying to organise for an amnesty, so that they can return to their country. According to the Serbian Ministry of Diaspora, about 150,000 people living abroad do not return or visit Serbia for fear of getting arrested at the border and/or taken to military barracks, as they had left the country without reporting for military service.
Source: Email from a Serbian diaspora draft age man known to War Resisters' International

More than 12000 young men applied for conscientious objection in Serbia and Montenegro since the introduction of regulation for conscientious objection came into force last year, and substitute service began on 22 December 2003. According to information from the Army of Serbia and Montenegro, 6155 persons were performing substitute service in October 2004, and 5621 cases were still pending. This is about 30% of all persons liable to conscription.

Source: Email Igor Seke, 29 October 2004

CCPR/CO/81/SEMO
12 August 2004

(...)

21. The Committee takes note of the information provided by the delegation whereby conscientious objection is governed by a provisional decree, which is to be replaced by a law, which will recognize full conscientious objection to military service and an alternative civil service that will have the same duration as military service (art. 18).

Stasa Zajovic, on behalf of Women in Black from Belgrade, wrote on July 15th 2002 a letter to Serbian war veterans' and refugee organisations of Bratunca and Srebrenica, explaining why they had paid tribute to the Srebrenica massacre:

Katarina Putnik

The topic of Serbia and its political situation has been lingering in the news since the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, including the NATO bombing. Many things about this country and the region as a whole have been exposed to the world, apart from one: the truth! All sides involved, from the republics of ex- Yugoslavia to the international community, tell only their version of the conflict. This is not the way forward. If it continues, there is a dark future ahead for Serbia, as well as for many neighbouring countries.

The right to conscientious objection is derived from Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and seen as a manifestation of the freedom of religion and belief. The then CSCE stressed the right to conscientious objection in paragraph 18 of the Document of the Copenhagen meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension in June 1990.The UN Commission on Human Rights stressed the right to conscientious objection in several resolution, most recently Resolution 1998/77, 2000/34, 2002/45. The Council of Europe also stresses the right to conscientious objection, especially in resolution 337 (1967) and recommendations 1518 (2001), R (87) 8, and 816 (1977).

Conscription and Conscientious Objection Documentation Centre
War Resisters' International, 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DX, Britain
Tel.: +44-20-7278 4040, Fax: +44-20-7278 0444, email: concodoc@wri-irg.org

To: Council of Europe, UN Commission on Human Rights, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch
Update of report from 7 September 2002
Date: 13 September 2002
Our Ref.: YU10813-YU12368Introduction

In September 2002, War Resisters' International sent a delegation to Yugoslavia, to support two con

Igor Seke

Yugoslavia passed a new law on the Yuguslav army in January 2002, but this law still doesn't include any regulation on conscientious objection. Conscientious objectors can only perform a service without arms within the Yugoslav army - clearly not satisfactory for conscientious objectors. Media reports lead to quite some confusion. Some media wrote about a "military civilian service", and some even presented this option as a genuine civilian service, so that many conscripts got quite confused.

Balkan Peace Team - International e.V. Nonviolent Intervention in the Conflicts of Former Yugoslavia: Sending Teams of International Volunteers A Final Internal Assessment of

Rebuilding Kosov@ and the FRY: resource pages

This page contains links to WRI resources on former-Yugoslavia, with a focus on the Kosovo crisis and on resistance to militarism in Serbia/Montenegro.

Public statement

These days, it will be six years since another tragedy and another organized crime against civil population happened.

At the third conscientious objectors' meeting "Demilitarizing Ourselves and Our Environment" held from the 27-29 April 2001 at Srebrno Jezero near Pozarevac, participants from Aleksandrovac, Aleksinac, Belgrade, Cetinje, Kanjiza, Kragujevac, Kraljevo, Krusevac, Kula, Leskovac, Nis, Novi Pazar, Sabac, Tutin, Vrbas and Zajecar have concluded in complete agreement with the foreign participants from Croatia, Germany and Norway that the democratic changes of 2000 have created the necessary conditions for commencement of demilitarization of the country and region as a whole in order to transform