Inter­na­tio­nal Support of Conscien­tious Objec­tors and Deserters

Prisoners for Peace Day: 1st December

(01.12.2023) Today, December 1st, is Prisoners for Peace Day. On this day (and every day) we encourage you to show solidarity with the activists and conscientious objectors imprisoned due to their peace work and their refusal to take up arms.

Protection and asylum for human rights defender Olga Karach

Urgent Action

(25.08.2023) Following the denial of political asylum by the Lithuanian authorities for the Belarusian peacebuilder and human rights defender Olga Karach (Volha Karach), the international campaign #protection4olga has just been launched to demand protection and asylum for the director of the organisation ‘Our House‘. She has been fighting for human rights in Belarus for years, including the right to conscientious objection to military service, and is therefore persecuted and faces capital punishment in her country of origin, where she has been labelled a ‘terrorist’ by the regime.

As Urgent Action we have prepared a protest eMail to the Lithuanian government, which you can send via https://en.Connection-eV.org/olgakarach-form.

Ukraine: Release peace activist Yurii Sheliazhenko and drop all charges against him

(17.08.2023) The European Bureau for Conscientious Objection (EBCO), War Resisters’ International (WRI), the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) and Connection e.V. (Germany) strongly condemn the fact that Yurii Sheliazhenko, a well-known conscientious objector, pacifist, human rights defender and lawyer, Executive Secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, has been placed under partial house arrest by the Solomyanskyi District Court of Kyiv on 15 August 2023.

Ukraine: Drop the charge against Yurii Sheliazhenko

Pacifism is not a crime

(05.08.2023) The European Bureau for Conscientious Objection (EBCO), War Resisters’ International (WRI), the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) and Connection e.V. (Germany) strongly condemn the fact that Yurii Sheliazhenko, Executive Secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, has been formally charged by the Ukrainian government with the crime of “justification of Russian aggression” with sole “evidence” the Statement of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, adopted at the meeting on International Day of Peace 21 September 2022, entitled “Peace Agenda for Ukraine and the World”. What is more, the statement explicitly condemns Russian aggression (https://worldbeyondwar.org/peace-agenda-for-ukraine-and-the-world/).