Chapter ‘Spagaat van een dienstweigeraar’

Abstract

Choosing between refusing military service and defending your country is a difficult choice, as a former conscientious objector. What questions should you ask young people? The obligation to attend military service in the Netherlands was temporarily halted after the Cold War. A professional army has been received. Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, politics is now more frequently discussing the obligation to attend. At the age of seventeen, boys and girls receive a letter from the national government that registers them for attendance obligations. Is it not necessary to have a conversation with the younger generation before they agree to that call?