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MOVIMENTO PER L'ABOLIZIONE DELLA LEVA OBBLIGATORIA MILITARE E CIVILE |
Neither Fair Nor Useful
Italian movement for the abolition of military conscription
and mandatory civil service
Né Giusta Né Utile
c/o Valentina Piattelli
Casella Postale n. 5
50029 Tavarnuzze
Firenze
http://www.ngnu.org
e-mail: abolisci-leva@ngnu.org
Every year over 250 thousand young men are forced to give up 10 months of their life in order to offer a service that our Movement considers unfair and useless, if not harmful.
It is not fair because we believe the State must not arbitrarily and systematically oblige its citizens to go into a service, armed or not, against their will. In the case of military service the italian law on conscience objection admits that it is unfair to force people to do this kind of "service" against their conscience; in the case of civil service we believe one must not violently enforce solidarity and "volunteering".
The present conscription system is not even useful, if it has ever been, because a conscript army does certainly not respond to today's defense needs; neither can it be useful to society as a whole to exploit the underpaid and mandatory objectors' workmanship forcing them to delay their job careers. This form of feudal corvée cripples the true meaning of volunteering, steals job positions and endangers trade union rights and achievements.
We now live in a social, economic and political context which is completely different to that in which conscription was established. Not only does there not exist any more any threat of imminent invasion, but in the society in which we live, in a global economic market, we cannot afford any more to take 10 months' study, work or professional specialization away from our young men.
Conscription, besides depriving a man of the right to decide upon his own life and heavily conditioning the right to studying and accessing to a job, endangers a man's serenity and personal security.
Both the male civil service system, founded upon conscientious objectors, and male military conscription are a kind of sexist discrimination, which we strenuously oppose, and it is not by extending this injustice and waste of time to women that the problem can be fixed. By any means we state it unacceptable for the law to consider sex as a discriminant in deciding upon an individual's rigths and duties.
We definetely maintain that military conscription and mandatory civil service are both anachronistic and unjustified, incompatible with the right to personal freedom, the right to personal security and the right to equality without sex distinctions, provided by the Italian Constitution, by international treaties and by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Né Giusta Né Utile | E-mail: abolisci-leva@ngnu.org | |||
Movimento per l'abolizone della leva obbligatoria |