NationStates Jolt Archive

Conscription and the Rights of a Soldier

[DRAFT 3]

Conscription and the Rights of the Soldier

BELEIVING That conscription can be, and is, often abused by nations to violate the rights of their citizens.

UNDERSTANDING That although unfortuanate, conscription is sometimes needed for the defence of a nation.

Thus, the UN:

(1)
DEFINES Conscription as the practice of forceing citizens into military, or military style service.

(2)
DEFINES Volunteer, for the purposes of this resolution, one who willingly, being of clear mind and knowing the consequences, joins the military (or other agency/group).

(3)
DEFINES Military personelle or anyone serving in the military. This excludes enemy forces.

(4)
MANDATES That no person under the age of 18, nore over the age of 40 at the time of conscription may be conscripted.

(5)
MANDATES That no person with a physical or mental inhibitation, illness, or disability may be conscripted.

(6)
MANDATES That no person with children or an unborn child may be conscripted.

(7)
MANDATES That no person who is intoxicated, under the influence of narcotics, mentaly ill, or under the age of 16 may volunteer for military service.

(8)
MANDATES That all persons, should they choose, must be released from service after two years, and given the opportunity to leave every year afterwards should they decide to remain in service.

(9)
INSTRUCTS UN Nations to extend consideration towards those who's personal beleifs forbit killing or violence, such as providing them a co-ordination or medical assignment.

(10)
MANDATES That all military personelle be treated fairly, provided when ever possible a minimum of two meals per day, clean drinking water, functioning equipment, and time and supplies for personal hygiene.

(11)
MANDATES That all military personelle be treated equally, with no discrimination based on race, religion, ethnicity, beleifs or method by which they found themselves in the military.

(12)
MANDATES That all military personelle be allowed full communication with anyone they choose, and shall not be punished nor censored except in the case of security sensetive information.

(13)
MANDATES That all military personelle have the right to take reasonable action to preserve their lives in a situation where death or severe harm is almost guaranteed, no military personelle may be sent on a "suicide mission". As well, no military personelle may be executed or willfully killed or executed without a fair trial before an impartial judge and jury of peers.

The key word is service. Conscription does not have to be completely military. There are several countries with non-military conscription. I know this sounds odd. Or options for other than military service-- construction brigades, police brigades, civil defense corps, peace corps (disaster relief brigades, coast guard which have a different purpose than direct military service. This is one of the problems with conscription, it forces many people into the military who should not be there, but probably should still receive some training to prevent military takeover. 1 year general military service +1-2 years military or civil brigade service.

Entry into National Service for two years is required to gain citizenship rights here in Zeldon. They can serve in either our police (keep peace in borders), military (protect our borders), medical (provide healthcare for our citizens and their chidren), fire, and a number of other labor services. To end this means our citizens are not trained to protect their rights as citizens by serving the nation when there is a threat to those rights.

Also until the UN has it's own military and police forces we feel it should not have a say on how individual nations get their police and military troops to serve. As individual nations are the ones who will in the end see to it that citizens or human rights are protected not the UN, and this will only be achieved if those citizens are prepared to defend their right to have any rights. Thus they must be trained to serve in some way to help protect any rights they may claim.. Anyone who refuses to serve here will not be granted citizenship and thus has no rights; because they ain't earned them until they have finished National Service obligations.

here is a bit more information on conscription: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription

Zeldon and Commonalitarianism are absolutely correct that conscription does not mean military or military style service.
Other definitions can be found here: http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLJ,GGLJ:2006-05,GGLJ:en&q=define%3aconscription

You might need to work on the definition.

There are some very good issues raised within this draft. However, there are also very bad issues raised in this draft. For a start, the draft here is clearly ageist by limiting age groups (moreover whilst 18 to 40 might be a great range for most nations, alternative species may find this prohibitive).

Then you have all the spelling issues on this draft, not really an issue yet.

I think there is scope for a resolution on this matter.

MANDATES That no person with children or an unborn child may be conscripted.

I don't like this at all.

Firstly, the majority of the population is likely to have children, ruling out a huge number of people for conscription.

Secondly, I think this unfairly excludes sectors of the population, and certain minorities are going to become more common targets of conscription as a result, e.g. it is more likely that homosexuals will not have children, and so have a higher than normal chance of being drafted.

Oh, please. We're buying Knoot's "breeder majority" line as a valid argument now?

Well, on an individual basis, I hardly think it's fair that someone's inability to have children, for whatever reason, is a valid reason to send them off to war. It implies that the barren or the gay have less to offer society some how, or are more expendable.

Why then don't we say that no one with an IQ over 120 should be drafted, or no one who owns over £1 million.

Certainly in regards to those physically incapable of having children, that clause may well contradict Article 4 of the Universal Bill of Rights: "All human beings have the right to be treated equally under the law of any member nation".

A piece of constructive criticism for the representative of Dancing Bananaland.... It's hard for people to take your ideas seriously when your proposal is loaded with spelling errors and grammatical errors that jumble up the meaning of your provisions. They figure that, if you couldn't be bothered writing up a presentable proposal, they can't be bothered with trying to figure it out. You really do need to spend some time correcting the spelling and grammar before posting another draft.

Travilia T. Thwerdock
Ambassador (pro tem) to the United Nations

Well, on an individual basis, I hardly think it's fair that someone's inability to have children, for whatever reason, is a valid reason to send them off to war. It implies that the barren or the gay have less to offer society some how, or are more expendable.

Certainly in regards to those physically incapable of having children, that clause may well contradict Article 4 of the Universal Bill of Rights: "All human beings have the right to be treated equally under the law of any member nation".Well, women are much more likely to raise children as single parents, or to become pregnant, than men. Does this proposal unfairly discriminate against the latter? Invoking UBoR is a stretch and you know it. Does that mean that national policies conscripting only men are unlawful now?

Well, women are much more likely to raise children as single parents, or to become pregnant, than men. Does this proposal unfairly discriminate against the latter? Invoking UBoR is a stretch and you know it. Does that mean that national policies conscripting only men are unlawful now?

Invoking the UBoR may be a stretch, but I only do so because I do believe there is an underlying prejudice to this proposal that is inconsistent with the spirit of most other UN resolutions.

And yes, I do believe that national policies conscripting only men are unlawful. It is a most obviously sexist policy. Gwenstefani believes in true equality of the sexes, and although we do not have forced conscription, our armed forces comprise a large number of female soldiers, who are treated no differently from men.

The Nation of Razat is against nearly every part of this proposal. We are a country that has a lot of enemies, and we need conscription to protect ourselves. We don't think we can afford to have limits placed on our ability to conscript, especially since many of our enemies wouldn't be bound by such constraints.

I tried to clean up some spelling for you. There's probably a few mistakes still in there. I think "personell" is spelled without an "e" at the end, but I could be wrong. Here you are:

Conscription and the Rights of the Soldier

BELEIVING that conscription can be, and is, often abused by nations to violate the rights of their citizens.

UNDERSTANDING that although unfortuanate, conscription is sometimes needed for the defence of a nation.

Thus, the UN:

(1)
DEFINES "conscription" as the practice of forcing citizens into military or military style service.

(2)
DEFINES "volunteer", for the purposes of this resolution, one who willingly, being of clear mind and knowing the consequences, joins the military (or other agency/group).

(3)
DEFINES "military personell" as anyone serving in the military, excluding enemy forces.

(4)
MANDATES that no person under the age of 18 or over the age of 40 at the time of conscription may be conscripted.

(5)
MANDATES that no person with a physical or mental inhibitation, illness, or disability may be conscripted.

(6)
MANDATES that no person with children or an unborn child may be conscripted.

(7)
MANDATES that no person who is intoxicated, under the influence of narcotics, mentaly ill, or under the age of 16 may volunteer for military service.

(8)
MANDATES that all persons, should they choose, must be released from service after two years, and given the opportunity to leave every year afterwards should they decide to remain in service.

(9)
INSTRUCTS UN nations to extend consideration towards those whose personal beleifs forbid killing or violence, such as providing them a coordination or medical assignment.

(10)
MANDATES that all military personell be treated fairly, provided when ever possible a minimum of two meals per day, clean drinking water, functioning equipment, and time and supplies for personal hygiene.

(11)
MANDATES That all military personelle be treated equally, with no discrimination based on race, religion, ethnicity, beleifs or method by which they found themselves in the military.

(12)
MANDATES that all military personelle be allowed full communication with anyone they choose, and shall not be punished nor censored except in the case of security sensitive information.

(13)
MANDATES that all military personell have the right to take reasonable action to preserve their lives in a situation where death or severe harm is almost guaranteed: no military personell may be sent on a "suicide mission". As well, no military personell may be executed or deliberately killed or executed without a fair trial before an impartial judge and jury of peers.

Ceo, Dancing Bananas: It's "Personnel."

Conscription is a fact of life in Kirisubo and even after their two years service a citizen may well serve in the part time militia if they are up to the required standard. Also bear in mind that although someone may be called up they may not be accepted for service.

How else can you maintain the defence forces without it.

Some ideas mentioned here are practical and address issues such as child soldiers but this needs a lot more work before we could cast a vote in favour of it.

Our armed forces have sexual equality and have done for a long time since the samurai class covers both sexes.

Ms Midori Kasigi-Nero
Deputy Ambasador

Does that mean that national policies conscripting only men are unlawful now?

Our courts decided that that was the case under our own 'equal rights' legislation, years before we joined the UN...

Does that mean that national policies conscripting only men are unlawful now?

St Edmund's courts decided that conscripting only men would be illegal under our own 'equal rights' legislation, years before we joined the UN...

The government of the St Edmundan Antarctic is not entirely convinced that this is a matter that should be legislated about by the UN, rather than left for the nation's governments to consider independently.
If some such proposal does get submitted then we would definitely prefer that to be a version from which both the clause excluding parents from conscription and the clause allowing conscripts to leave the service after two years (which might not matter very much for peacetime 'national service', although the requisite period in both the St Edmundan Antarctic and St Edmund itself is currently 2½ years, but could potentially be a problem in any nations that are actually fighting for their very existence...) have been removed.

First: couldn't agree more with Ausserland's acting ambassador. I don't see why should endorse a proposal that makes my eyes bleed.

Not that I'll be endorsing this one anyway:

BELEIVING That conscription can be, and is, often abused by nations to violate the rights of their citizens.
Well, at least you're starting from an objective standpoint.

UNDERSTANDING That although unfortuanate, conscription is sometimes needed for the defence of a nation.
Yes. So fucking over our ability to use it might not be the wisest thing.

MANDATES That no person under the age of 18, nore over the age of 40 at the time of conscription may be conscripted.
The species-wankers may get you on this. "My elves live for ever! Why must they stop serving at 40?" And, more generally, in some countries it'd be inhuman to force 30 year olds into service; in some, 50 year olds are fit as a fiddle. Same at the other end.

Univeral age limits are stupid. The qualifications for entry should be based on mental, physical and emotional competence; and that's not something the UN can set one universal standard on. It's for recruitment officers, with advice from doctors and the like, to decide on. National issue, at the most.

MANDATES That no person with a physical or mental inhibitation, illness, or disability may be conscripted.
Why on earth not? Firstly, this would mean no one with a cold, a broken finger, in fact anyone with less than perfect vision, hearing, acuity, and generally everything, could be recruited. Besides, are you saying those with disabilities can't provide for their nation? One of Gruenberg's most famous pilots lost both his legs in an accident - and continued to be an air ace. We have a number of people - admittedly mostly not in front-line positions - with various illnesses or disabilities. That's not because we're using them: it's because their disability does not impair their doing their job.

You're like one of these people who think we should ban disabled people from working, on the grounds "it's in their interests".

MANDATES That no person with children or an unborn child may be conscripted.
Uh...what? The word you're looking for is "pregnant". And do you have no idea about demographics? Excluding all people with children would completely bork any serious effort at national defence, because so many would be excluded.

MANDATES That all persons, should they choose, must be released from service after two years, and given the opportunity to leave every year afterwards should they decide to remain in service.
You do realize that some wars last for...more than two years?

INSTRUCTS UN Nations to extend consideration towards those who's personal beleifs forbit killing or violence, such as providing them a co-ordination or medical assignment.
I have no idea what this means. I think it's a soft endorsement of conscientious objection. If so, that's right out, no matter how soft. A national matter.

MANDATES That all military personelle be treated equally, with no discrimination based on race, religion, ethnicity, beleifs or method by which they found themselves in the military.
Nonsense, especially when you just told us to discriminate based on "beliefs". If we didn't discriminate, it would become illegal for us to give COs non-combat roles, because it would be treating them unequally on account of their beliefs.

And there are good reasons for separating volunteer and conscript forces.

MANDATES That all military personelle be allowed full communication with anyone they choose, and shall not be punished nor censored except in the case of security sensetive information.
"shall not be punished"!? So, this is a ban on all military discipline? Fraternising with the enemy will remain a capital crime in Gruenberg.

MANDATES That all military personelle have the right to take reasonable action to preserve their lives in a situation where death or severe harm is almost guaranteed, no military personelle may be sent on a "suicide mission". As well, no military personelle may be executed or willfully killed or executed without a fair trial before an impartial judge and jury of peers.
No. Military tribunals are far more effective than juries in deciding what are often sensitive, and highly-charged, cases. And the former is something to be determined on the basis of rules of engagement, and judged under war crimes law. You can't set a flat one sentence mandate.

Needless to say, we hope this junk of shit doesn't get anywhere near quorum, because we now can't resign from the UN, owing to regional obligations.

(1)DEFINES "conscription" as the practice of forcing citizens into military or military style service.Are you awake as conscription is not only into military or military style service thus this is not a good definition. As it is we will not support it because we believe the UN with no military forces to fill they should not mandate on members how they get their military troops.

(2) DEFINES "volunteer", for the purposes of this resolution, one who willingly, being of clear mind and knowing the consequences, joins the military (or other agency/group).This is about only one we can agree on

(3) DEFINES "military personell" as anyone serving in the military, excluding enemy forces.Why are our enemy forces not considered "military personell" those attacking us who are not such are considered "terrorists" or "criminals" and are not given the same rights as "military personell" when taken by us.

(4)MANDATES that no person under the age of 18 or over the age of 40 at the time of conscription may be conscripted.To become a citizen of our nation one must at age 10 males and age 12 females do one years National Service in our military forces.. This stops that and we will not... they complete National Service at age 16 thus have full citizenship rights here where before only had selected rights of citizenship.

(5)
MANDATES that no person with a physical or mental inhibitation, illness, or disability may be conscripted.If they can think and act on their thoughs then they can perform some kind of service to the nation. Thus all do some form of National Service for one year required.

(6)MANDATES that no person with children or an unborn child may be conscripted.This makes up most of our citizenship as they have children thus would be exempt from National Service under this.

(7)MANDATES that no person who is intoxicated, under the influence of narcotics, mentaly ill, or under the age of 16 may volunteer for military service.Mentaly was covered under 5 above. Many of our citizens go on to be active in the military from age 11 males and 13 females and if they are using narcotics or drunks they will not survice the entrance testing. Also here 16 is the age one gains full citizenship rights only if they have completed National Service requirements.

(8)MANDATES that all persons, should they choose, must be released from service after two years, and given the opportunity to leave every year afterwards should they decide to remain in service.We have no problem with this as one year is all they have to do here.. under National Service in our Defense related agencies. Military, Police, Medical, Fire, and some others.

(9)INSTRUCTS UN nations to extend consideration towards those whose personal beleifs forbid killing or violence, such as providing them a coordination or medical assignment.Our citizens believe they have a duty to defend their given rights and thus must train to do this. Thus National Service gives them the training they need to serve the nation in times of danger and against any threats to it.
Why do you only instruct us here and mandate the rest this to me is only one makes any sense here and you weaken it by your choice to open it with instructs.

(10) MANDATES that all military personell be treated fairly, provided when ever possible a minimum of two meals per day, clean drinking water, functioning equipment, and time and supplies for personal hygiene.From a body (UN) that has no military forces one can understand this coming out but any nation that doesn't treat it's military well will fail to survive even with it in place.

(11)MANDATES That all military personell be treated equally, with no discrimination based on race, religion, ethnicity, beleifs or method by which they found themselves in the military.Again if those in military are citizens of the nation then they already have all this and the UN has already protected most of these simply because they are living beings and have certain rights so why are you giving them these again here.

(12) MANDATES that all military personelle be allowed full communication with anyone they choose, and shall not be punished nor censored except in the case of security sensitive information.NATIONAL SECURITY RESTRICTIONS in place would require them at times not to speak or write or signal others of their actions and thus this is not going to go over well.. As the old saying 'loose lips sink ships' is one we won't let happen..

(13) MANDATES that all military personell have the right to take reasonable action to preserve their lives in a situation where death or severe harm is almost guaranteed: no military personell may be sent on a "suicide mission". As well, no military personell may be executed or deliberately killed or executed without a fair trial before an impartial judge and jury of peers. :A dead soldier was either a fool or they failed to follow the training they were given. We don't send our military personell on 'suicide missions' we pray they will use the training they got and come home safe when we send them on any mission against our enemies.. We realize that death is waiting for us every time we go on a mission and are prepared to face it.. Hopefully death is there for only our enemy and not us..

Military Field Courts here in the heat of battle consist of one officer and three peers.. who select a firing squad, if person is found guilty by these four, one soldier with weapon to carry out the sentence of the MFC...

A dead soldier was either a fool or they failed to follow the training they were given.

This statement is a gross insult to those who have given their lives in the service of their country. To say that any soldier who dies in combat is a fool or didn't follow their training is as ridiculous as it is offensive. The representative should be ashamed of himself.

Travilia T. Thwerdock
Ambassador (pro tem) to the United Nations

This statement is a gross insult to those who have given their lives in the service of their country. To say that any soldier who dies in combat is a fool or didn't follow their training is as ridiculous as it is offensive. The representative should be ashamed of himself.

Travilia T. Thwerdock
Ambassador (pro tem) to the United NationsMy comment was directed at this proposal as feel that a well trained military is one that is respected. From the clauses in the proposal got that the proposer has either served in military and had a bad time or heard others talk about life in military. Military service it not for all and thus here we don't require them all to serve in it. However we do reguire they get basic training so that should the need arrise they can defend themselves and their family. Those that refuse to defend their own don't deserve what they have been given.. As these are the fools I was talking about and these are the ones get killed because they have some idea others won't kill them, or that somebody else will be there to die for them.

OOC:This comment was not intended for those soldiers doing their duty. However I've seen some that got into service for the benifits and now that they have to work for them they are crying foul. These are the fools that most of the time survive but get a lot of others killed. I've seen enough of these and consider them fools for thinking they would be getting a free ride. Also just watching news about Stephen Green.. So somebody is not doing their jobs some place... as have read all sorts of things out of Iraq that take me back to another war I was in.. Viet Nam where my greatest fear was not the enemy but some fool on my own side trying to get out of Nam by getting even with anyone. As only person in Nam I aimed a loaded weapon at were suppose to be on same side I was. Still I respect those in harms way and pray they all come home safe but as long as there are fools around they need more than my prayers.... and I won't comment on who those fools are and at what level they start down from..