Reminds the organisation EBCO with its press release on the International Day of Peace 2024.

Brussels, 21 September 2024

Today is the International Day of Peace, established since 1981 by the United Nations General Assembly with an invitation to all member states, regional and non-governmental organisations and every individual to commemorate the day appropriately through education and public awareness. Year after year it becomes more and more evident that global peace needs nonviolence and the ceasefire calling on all belligerents around the world to lay down their arms and end war.

Conscientious objection is often perceived as an individual stand but is also a form of action to organize people against war and violence. It’s also a right to be safeguarded, fully complying with the European and international standards, amongst others the standards set by the European Court of Human Rights. The right to conscientious objection to military service is inherent in the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, guaranteed under Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which is non-derogable even in a time of public emergency, as stated in Article 4(2) of ICCPR.

For this reason, every year, EBCO produces the Annual Report on conscientious objection to military service in Europe, gathering input from member states’ governments, national human rights institutions, as well as international and national non-governmental organisations and solidarity groups.

Within this perspective, EBCO continues working on the #ObjectWarCampaign, which was jointly launched by Connection e.V., War Resisters’ International (WRI), International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR), and European Bureau for Conscientious Objection (EBCO), urging the involved countries in the ongoing Russian war of aggression against Ukraine to mobilise for peace instead of war, and the EU and the international community to invest in diplomacy and negotiations.

EBCO of course stands in solidarity with Israeli conscientious objectors and all victims of this armed conflict, and EBCO members have held and participated in a number of activities in support of the Israeli conscientious objectors and the nonviolent activists from both sides for a just peace.

We have built all the conditions for war, which was cleared as an instrument of international politics at the end of the last century, to once again become the protagonist of international relations and could lead to a new global conflict. Now is the time to build together all the conditions so that peace, nonviolence and disarmament can nurture a better world for all. Conscientious objection to military service, objection to war and the right not to kill are our contribution on this path.

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND INTERVIEWS please contact:

Daniele Taurino, EBCO President, [email protected], www.ebco-beoc.org, mobile +39 3283736667 (Italian, Engish)

Sam Biesemans, EBCO Board, (speaks French, Dutch, Italian and English), [email protected], mobile +32 477 268893

The European Bureau for Conscientious Objection (EBCO) was founded in Brussels in 1979 as an umbrella structure for associations and experts of conscientious objectors in the European countries to promote the right to conscientious objection to preparations for, and participation in, war and any other type of military activity as a fundamental human right. EBCO enjoys participatory status with the Council of Europe since 1998 and is a member of its Conference of International Non-Governmental Organisations since 2005. EBCO is entitled to lodge collective complaints concerning the European Social Charter of the Council of Europe since 2021. EBCO provides expertise and legal opinions to European and international institutions. EBCO publishes its annual report “Conscientious Objection to Military Service in Europe” which is also EBCO’s contribution to the annual report of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs of the European Parliament on the application by the Member States of its resolutions on conscientious objection and civilian service, as determined in the “Bandrés Molet & Bindi Resolution” of 1994. EBCO is a full member of the European Youth Forum since 1995.

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