A Conscientious Objector's Guide to the International Human Rights System

This guide updates and expands the publication A Conscientious Objectors Guide to the UN Human Rights System, published jointly by War Resisters' International and the Quaker United Nations Office, Geneva, in 2000, and compiled by Emily Miles. The initial publication was extremely useful in raising awareness about the use of the United Nations human rights system to advance the right to conscientious objection to military service, and to protect conscientious objectors from persecution.

However, there have been a number of advancements in relation to the right to conscientious objection to military service since the initial publication, which made an update necessary. The most important of these has been the United Nations Human Rights Committee decision in the case of the complaint by Yeo-Bum Yoon and Myung-Jin Choi vs. Republik of Korea from January 2007, in which the Human Rights Committee for the first time explicitly recognised the right to conscientious objection to military service. Other UN mechanisms too have increasingly dealt with conscientious objection to military service, creating a wealth of opinions and jurisprudence recognising the right to conscientious objection.

Initial discussions between War Resisters' International and the Quaker United Nations Office, Geneva, about updating the 2000 Guide go back to 2008. It quickly became clear that a simple update of the UN system would not be sufficient. In their work with human rights and conscientious objection organisations from all parts of the world, both, War Resisters' International and the Quaker United Nations Office, Geneva, often a lack of comparative knowledge of the different regional and international human rights mechanisms, and tendency to do “the usual” - meaning to use the regional or international system usually used by NGOs from a respective country, irrespective of whether or not the system had a good track record on conscientious objection to military service. Both organisations therefore felt that a comparative overview of the United Nations' and regional human rights systems would be needed, to enable conscientious objectors, their organisations and human rights NGOs to make an informed choice which system to use.

Available at https://co-guide.info/.