Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Military service
Summary
Military service is service by an individual or group in an army or other militia, air forces, and naval forces, whether as a chosen job (volunteer) or as a result of an involuntary draft (conscription).
Some nations, such as Israel, require a specific amount of military service from every citizen, except for special cases, such as limitation determined by a military physical or religious belief. Most countries that use conscription systems only conscript men; a few countries also conscript women. For example, Norway, Sweden, North Korea, Israel, and Eritrea conscript both men and women. However, only Norway and Sweden have a gender-neutral conscription system, where men and women are conscripted and serve on equal formal terms. Some nations with conscription systems do not enforce them.
Nations which conscript for military service typically also rely on citizens choosing to join the armed forces as a career.
Some nations with armed forces do not conscript their personnel (e.g. most NATO and European Union states). Instead, they promote military careers to attract and select recruits; see military recruitment.
Some, usually smaller, nations have no armed forces at all or rely on an armed domestic security force (e.g. police, coast guard).
In this summary, 195 countries are included.
The following 113 countries and territories have been identified as having no enforced conscription:
(none only if quota is met)
(de facto)
no countries have been identified as intending to abolish conscription in the near future.
The following countries, regions, and colonies have been identified as having both compulsory and voluntary military service:
The following eleven countries have been identified as having selective conscription:
The following fifteen countries have been identified as having a civilian, unarmed or non-combatant service optional alternative to compulsory military service:
(9 months civilian, 6 armed)
(3 years civilian, 18 months or 1 year armed)
(18 months civilian, 14 armed)
(1 year civilian, unarmed 9 months or 1 year, armed 6, 9 months or 1 year)
(22 months including 2 months of armed training)
(365 days civilian, 245 armed)
(2 years selective)
(3 years for men.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.