Young recruits taking their oath. Archive (Mari Nikuradze/OC Media)
Georgia’s ruling party wants to remove mention of mandatory military service from the country’s constitution, according to Speaker of Parliament Irakli Kobakhidze, who spoke briefly about the initiative during a briefing on planned constitutional amendments on 5 June.
This does not mean the government will necessarily abolish conscription, he explained.
‘The constitution won’t regulate this issue anymore’, Kobakhidze said. ‘It will be a subject for parliament and the government to decide whether it will exist or not, and what the system will look like’, he continued.
According to the current constitution, all men capable of serving are obliged to serve in the military in ‘defence of the country’.
The current legislation, which drafts all men aged 18–27 for two years service, allows for some exemptions, including for students at higher education institutions and theological schools, and priests.
Many young men are concerned about the draft, and attempt to avoid it however they can.
The opposition Girchi party recently established a ‘religious organisation’, to help draftees avoid conscription by certifying them as priests.
Irakli Sesiashvili, Chairman of the Parliamentary Defence and Security Committee, has introduced a new draft law proposing three years imprisonment for avoiding conscription. Girchi claims that the initiative was made in response to their ‘religion’.
On 23 May 2017, the parliamentary committees for Defence and Human Rights supported the draft law at a joint sitting.
Georgia’s government is implementing sweeping changes to the country’s constitution. According to their proposals, amendments would change the way the president is elected and deprive him of certain powers, define marriage as a ‘union between a man and a woman’, abolish single-member voting constituencies, and ‘guarantee the social rights of its citizens’.
Human rights activist Zaruhi Hovhannisyan has slammed the Deputy Chair of the Armenian Parliament’s Defence Committee, Armen Khachatryan, for attempting to downplay the responsibility of the authorities in the non-combat deaths of soldiers.
‘In our civilian life, we have many suicides, we have many accidents. I don’t know why you don’t talk about it, the reasons for those suicides’, Khachatryan said on Tuesday, in response to a question regarding the recent death of a soldier outside of comba
Georgia’s defence code is stamping out loopholes that young Georgians use to get out of military service, as rights activists in the country warn that new amendments to the code could lead to discrimination against religious minorities.
This week, we spoke to a Georgian student about why he chose to evade conscription, to Ioseb Edisherashvili from the Georgian Young Lawyers Association about the controversy surrounding the defence code, and to Giorgi Shaishmelashvili, the
Georgia’s parliamentary majority has amended the country’s defence code, closing loopholes allowing conscientious objectors and long-distance students to defer their military service.
Thursday’s amendments revoked exemption from military service for students enrolled in full-time distance study, as well as complicating a process used by conscientious objectors to immediately defer their service.
This follows the introduction of a new defence code in September, which removed exemptions for al
The Armenian Ministry of Defence has put forward proposals to allow conscripts to avoid most of their military service in exchange for ֏24 million ($61,000).
The bill, which was submitted for public debate on Wednesday, would allow wealthier Armenians to serve for just 4.5 months, instead of the usual two years.
The ministry explained that the ‘logic’ behind the move was that ֏24 million would be enough to pay a contract soldier ֏400,000 ($1,000) per month for five years.
The ministry sa
Georgia’s ruling party wants to remove mention of mandatory military service from the country’s constitution, according to Speaker of Parliament Irakli Kobakhidze, who spoke briefly about the initiative during a 
