page_title: Conscientious objector
section_title: France
hierarchical_section_title: Conscientious objector / Conscientious objection around the world / France
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Timbre en faveur des objecteurs de conscience sans doute édité par la "Ligue des objecteurs" (France) en 1933.
context_page_description: A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion.
  In some countries, conscientious objectors are assigned to an alternative civilian service as a substitute for conscription or military service. Some conscientious objectors consider themselves pacifist, non-interventionist, non-resistant, non-aggressionist, anti-imperialist, antimilitarist or philosophically stateless.
  On March 8, 1995, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights resolution 1995/83 stated that "persons performing military service should not be excluded from the right to have conscientious objections to military service". This was re-affirmed in 1998, when resolution 1998/77 recognized that "persons [already] performing military service may develop conscientious objections". A number of organizations around the world celebrate the principle on May 15 as International Conscientious Objection Day. The term has also been extended to objecting to working for the military–industrial complex due to a crisis of conscience.
context_section_description: The creation of a legal status for conscientious objectors in France was the subject of a long struggle involving for instance or the much-publicised trials of Protestant activists Jacques Martin, Philippe Vernier and Camille Rombault in 1932–1933 or the hunger strike of anarchist Louis Lecoin in 1962.
  The legal status law was passed in December 1963, 43 years (and many prison sentences) after the first requests.
  In 1983, a new law passed by socialist Interior Minister Pierre Joxe considerably improved this status, simplifying the conditions under which the status would be granted. Conscientious objectors were then free to choose an activity in the social realm where they would spend their civil service time. However, in order to avoid too many applications for civil service at the expense of the military, the duration of the civil service is however kept twice as long as the military service.
  The effect of these laws was suspended in 2001 when compulsory military service was abolished in France. The special prison at Strasbourg for Jehovah's Witnesses, who refuse to join any military, was also abolished.
  Since 1986, the associations defending conscientious objection in France have chosen to celebrate their cause on 15 May.
caption: Stamp created by the Centre de défense des objecteurs de conscience (around 1936).
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