Whilst starting my research, a much simpler term cropped up a lot of the time. That term was conscription and on the Wikipedia page for Military Service, I was presented with a diagram which showed me everywhere where conscription is currently happening
For reference -
- Green - No armed forces
- Blue - No enforced conscription
- Orange - Plan to abolish conscription in the near future
- Red - Conscription
- Grey - No information
From this piece of research I can see that the world is pretty split on whether or not they take part in conscription. However, this is slightly skewed by the whole of Russia taking part. Major places in the world such as the UK, America and Canada, India, China, Australia and Japan don't however take part.
This is useful because I could potentially reach out to people who are from specific countries in the red and try get a statement on their thoughts or conduct an interview over email with said person.
A further statistic I've found is the total amount of countries with no enforced conscription in the world. The statistic is that 105 countries have been identified as having no enforced conscription and a list of the countries can be found here:
Why this is interesting is because it stands as a point that mandatory military service isn't a popular route or path which enforces people to take part in serving for their country. In fact, in total there are 196 countries to which as shown above, 105 of them don't take part in conscription.
This means only 91 countries take part in conscription and three are looking to abolish it in the next three years which means for my double page spread against mandatory military service, this can provide as a strong quote.
Part of my research was also general knowledge and something I knew beforehand without the need of a source. For example, its common sense that if you are called to serve for your country in the military, you will lose your job and have to give it up for up to 2 years in some places. Its also common sense that going to serve in the military will separate you from your family and friends.
I also think it goes without saying that not everyone wants to fight, not everyone wants to be told what to do and not everyone is fit and ready to.
These are the main points I want to drive home through with my double page spread. I want to make a constant reminder that its not for everyone and people shouldn't be made to fight. As well as this, I also want to provide a counter argument to those who would ridicule someone who doesn't want to fight and those who think its cowardice or unpatriotic.
To accomplish this, I thought to myself about the different ways in which someone can provide for their country and be a part of it in a benefitting way. This lead me onto simple things like people who work at a shop and serve customers because to me, I think that counts as serving for your country in another way. You provide a service to people and contribute to society. Even if you aren't fighting for your country, you could be supplying for your country with food for example. This was extremely prevalent in WWII, where woman and families not in the war would grown their own foods and eat less so their soldiers could eat more via rations.
Another statistic I would like to use in the making of my double page spread, it shows off conscription in a bad way and also is a pretty impressive statistic as a whole which goes completely against the idea of conscription.
Links to all the written research done -
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