Right to Conscientious Objection to Military Services: International to National Perspective

Abstract

The international regulation (United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights) stipulates that everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion and that this right includes freedom to change their religion or belief and freedom to manifest their religion or belief. The U.N. Human Rights Committee concluded that the right to conscientious objections could be derived from Article 18. Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights also extends to the cases of the opposition to military service. In Latvia the question of conscientious objection was regulated in the Alternative Service Law which expired in 2007 when the compulsory military service was completely abolished. Since then, the question about the conscientious objection to the military service has not been directly regulated in the national normative acts and has not also been raised in the courts of Latvia. In 2021, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Latvia heard the case about the refusal to be a reserve soldier and to perform service in the National Armed Forces’ reserve on the ground of the pacifist beliefs of the applicant. This case revealed the lack of legal tools in Latvian military service regulations to respect the human rights mentioned therein. The purpose of the article is to propose the possible solutions to the identified gaps in Latvian regulation by analysing the international and national regulation, other countries’ experience and judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. The historical, analytical, systemic and teleological method has been used in the preparation of article.