LITHUANIA: Conscientious objection to military service
Oral statement of the Dutch branch of Human Rights Without Frontiers at the OSCE Warsaw Human Dimension Conference
HRWF (07.10.2024) – Mensenrechten Zonder Grenzen Nederland is deeply concerned about the decision of the Lithuanian Parliament on 6 June 2024 rejecting the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ request for the enhanced status of a State-recognized religion on two grounds. One of them is conscientious objection to military service. We recommend that Lithuania recognizes without delay
- the full right to conscientious objection on the grounds of their religious beliefs and
- the right to perform an alternative civilian service that is not under the authority of the army.
Statement about the facts
The Republic of Lithuania asserts that military service is a constitutional duty of every citizen of the country and that membership of a Jehovah’s Witnesses community does not exempt one from this duty, and does not justify non-compliance with laws.
However, on 7 June 2022, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously ruled that in the case Teliatnikov v. Lithuania dealing with the conscientious objection of a Jehovah’s Witness minister there had been a violation of Article 9 of the European Convention guaranteeing freedom of religion or belief.
The Court ultimately held that that the failure to respect the applicant’s conscientious objection had not been “necessary in a democratic society”.
Moreover, nearly all Council of Europe Member States have recognised the principle of conscientious objection as part of freedom of religion or belief.
We therefore recommend that Lithuania
- comply with the UN Covenant it has signed and ratified, the standards of the Council of Europe and the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights;
- remove the conscientious objection argument as one of the two reasons for not granting Jehovah’s Witnesses the enhanced status of a State-recognized religion.
