Europe is being increasingly militarised. So-called defence budgets swell while social services are squeezed. From classrooms to news bulletins, the chorus is the same: prepare, comply, enlist. Conscription is being normalised again, recast as a civic duty.

We reject this fatalism. Conscientious objection (CO) — the refusal to kill — is recognised within the United Nations human rights system as an exercise of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion (ICCPR Article 18). States are urged to provide fair procedures, accessible non-punitive alternatives, and to refrain from penalising those who object — in peace or wartime.

But CO is more than a personal right; it is a strategic lever. Wars need bodies, obedience, and legitimacy. When refusal spreads — from individual objectors to mass draft resistance, in-service refusal, and wider social non-cooperation — it raises political costs, degrades military capacity, and can force policy change.

History bears this out: mutiny and refusal helped precipitate the end of World War I in Germany; GI resistance eroded the ability to continue the Vietnam War; mass desertion and draft evasion undermined Portugal’s colonial wars before the Carnation Revolution. When refusal scales, war becomes logistically and politically impossible. That is the path to a world beyond war.

Today, objectors in Israel, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Turkiye, Greece, and elsewhere face prosecution, fines, and prison for saying the simplest moral sentence: No — I will not kill and be part of militarisation. Protecting them is both a legal obligation and a practical route to peace.

What we call for:

1. Protect and expand CO in law and practice. Implement UN guidance fully: accessible procedures; recognition of in-service CO; genuinely civilian alternative service; no criminal penalties or discrimination.
2. Create a UN mandate on CO. The Human Rights Council should appoint a Special Rapporteur/Independent Expert on conscientious objection to military service to consolidate jurisprudence, issue urgent appeals, and drive compliance. This will improve the right to conscientious objection globally and improve legislation and jurisprudence of human rights.
3. Guarantee sanctuary. Ensure asylum and protection for conscientious objectors, draft resisters and deserters fleeing persecution; end refusals and removals that force COs to countries they originally fled from or where they are likely to face persecution.
4. Resource refusal at scale. Fund legal aid, counselling, and cross-border support networks; establish municipal and university “sanctuary for CO” programmes; protect workers who refuse to facilitate the machinery of war (e.g., handling weapons shipments).
5. Back existing campaigns. Support and amplify the work of movements documenting cases and defending objectors across Europe and its neighbourhood, including the European Bureau of Conscientious Objection and War Resisters’ International (WRI). And finally, consider becoming a CO yourself.