Draft evasion
Draft evasion or conscription evasion is avoiding a government-imposed obligation to serve in the military forces. Sometimes draft evasion involves refusing to comply with the military draft laws. Illegal draft evasion is said to have characterized every military conflict of the 20th and 21st centuries, in which at least one party of such conflict has enforced conscription. Such evasion is generally considered to be a criminal offense, and laws against it go back thousands of years.
There are many draft evasion practices. Those that manage to adhere to or circumvent the law, and those that do not involve taking a public stand, are sometimes referred to as draft avoidance. Draft evaders are sometimes pejoratively referred to as draft dodgers, although in certain contexts that term has also been used non-judgmentally or as an honorific.
Practices that involve lawbreaking or taking a public stand are sometimes referred to as draft resistance. Although draft resistance is discussed below as a form of "draft evasion", draft resisters and scholars of draft resistance reject the categorization of resistance as a form of evasion or avoidance. Draft resisters argue that they seek to confront, not evade or avoid, the draft.
Draft evasion has been a significant phenomenon in countries as different as Belarus, Colombia, Eritrea, the Netherlands, Canada, France, Russia, South Korea, Syria, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States. Accounts by scholars and journalists, along with memoiristic writings by draft evaders, indicate that the motives and beliefs of the evaders cannot be usefully stereotyped.
Draft evasion practices
Young people have engaged in a wide variety of draft evasion practices around the world, some of which date back thousands of years. This section aims to delineate a representative sampling of draft evasion practices and support activities as identified by scholars and journalists. Examples of many of these practices and activities can be found in the section on draft evasion in the nations of the world, further down this page.Draft avoidance
One type of draft avoidance consists of attempts to follow the letter and spirit of the draft laws in order to obtain a legally valid draft deferment or exemption. Sometimes these deferments and exemptions are prompted by political considerations. Another type consists of attempts to circumvent, manipulate, or surreptitiously violate the substance or spirit of the draft laws in order to obtain a deferment or exemption. Nearly all attempts at draft avoidance are private and unpublicized. Examples include:By adhering to the law
- Claiming conscientious objector status on the basis of sincerely held religious or ethical beliefs.
- Claiming a student deferment, when one is in school primarily in order to study and learn.
- Claiming a medical or psychological problem, if the purported health issue is genuine and serious.
- Claiming to be homosexual, when one is truly so and the military excludes homosexuals.
- Claiming economic hardship, if the hardship is genuine and the law recognizes such a claim.
- Holding a job in what the government considers to be an essential civilian occupation.
- Purchasing exemptions from military service, in nations where such payments are permitted.
- Not being chosen in a draft lottery, where lotteries determine the order of call to military service; or not being in a certain age group, where age determines the order of call.
- Not being able to afford armor or other equipment, in polities where conscripts were required to provide their own.
By circumventing the law
- Obtaining conscientious objector status by professing insincere religious or ethical beliefs.
- Obtaining a student deferment, if the student wishes to attend or remain in school largely to avoid the draft.
- Claiming a medical or psychological problem, if the purported problem is feigned, overstated, or self-inflicted.
- Finding a doctor who would certify a healthy draft-age person as medically unfit, either willingly or for pay.
- Deliberately self-injuring oneself.
- Becoming pregnant primarily in order to evade the draft, in nations where women who are not mothers are drafted.
- Falsely claiming to be homosexual, where the military excludes homosexuals.
- Deliberately failing one's military-related intelligence tests.
- Claiming economic hardship, if the purported hardship is overstated.
- Having someone exert personal influence on an officer in charge of the conscription process.
- Successfully bribing an officer in charge of the conscription process.
Draft resistance
Actions by resisters
- Declining to register for the draft, in nations where that is required by law.
- Declining to report for one's draft-related physical examination, or for military induction or call-up, in nations where these are required by law.
- Participating in draft card burnings or turn-ins.
- Living "underground" and working at an unreported job after being indicted for draft evasion.
- Traveling or emigrating to another country, rather than submitting to induction or to trial.
- Going to jail, rather than submitting to induction or to alternative government service.
- Shooting and/or killing draft officers and civil authorities.
Actions by supporters or resisters
- Organizing or participating in a peaceful street assembly or demonstration against the draft.
- Publicly encouraging, aiding, or abetting draft evaders.
- Deliberately disrupting a military draft agency's processes or procedures.
- Destroying a military draft agency's records.
- Organizing or participating in a riot against the draft.
- Building an anti-war movement that treats draft resistance as a vital and integral part of it.
By country
Australia
Australian men were conscripted to fight in the Vietnam War; as in the U.S., this was resisted.Belgium
19th-century Belgium was one of the few places where most citizens accepted the practice of legally buying one's way out of the military draft, sometimes referred to as the practice of "purchasable military commutation". Even so, some Belgian politicians denounced it as a system that appeared to trade the money of the rich for the lives of the poor.Britain
In January 1916, during World War I, the British government passed a military conscription bill. By July of that year, 30% of draftees had failed to report for service.Canada
Canada employed a military draft during World Wars I and II, and some Canadians chose to evade it. According to Canadian historian Jack Granatstein, "no single issue has divided Canadians so sharply" as the military draft. During both World Wars, political parties collapsed or were torn apart over the draft issue, and ethnicity seeped into the equation, with most French Canadians opposing conscription and a majority of English Canadians accepting it. During both wars, riots and draft evasion followed the passage of the draft laws.World War I
Conscription had been a dividing force in Canadian politics during World War I, and those divisions led to the Conscription Crisis of 1917. Canadians objected to conscription for diverse reasons: some thought it unnecessary, some did not identify with the British, and some felt it imposed unfair burdens on economically struggling segments of society. When the first draft class was called up in 1917, nearly 281,000 of the approximately 404,000 men filed for exemptions. Throughout the war, some Canadians who feared conscription left for the United States or elsewhere.World War II
Canada introduced an innovative kind of draft law in 1940 with the National Resources Mobilization Act. While the move was not unpopular outside French Canada, controversy arose because under the new law, conscripts were not compelled to serve outside Canada. They could choose simply to defend the country against invasion. By the middle of the war, many Canadians – not least of all, conscripts committed to overseas service – were referring to NRMA men pejoratively as "Zombies", that is, as dead-to-life or utterly useless. Following costly fighting in Italy, Normandy, and the Scheldt, overseas Canadian troops were depleted, and during the Conscription Crisis of 1944 a one-time levy of approximately 17,000 NRMA men was sent to fight abroad. Many NRMA men deserted after the levy rather than fight abroad. One brigade of NRMA men declared itself on "strike" after the levy.The number of men who actively sought to evade the World War II draft in Canada is not known. Granatstein says the evasion was "widespread". In addition, in 1944 alone approximately 60,000 draftees were serving only as NRMA men, committed to border defense but not to fighting abroad.
Colombia
Colombia maintains a large and well-funded military, often focused on counter-insurgency. There is an obligatory military draft for all young men. Nevertheless, according to Public Radio International, two types of draft evasion are widespread in Colombia; one is prevalent among the relatively well-off, and another is found among the poor.Young men from the middle-to-upper classes "usually" evade the Colombian draft. They do so by obtaining college or medical deferments, or by paying bribes for a "military ID card" certifying they have served – a card that is often requested by potential employers.
Young men from poorer circumstances sometimes simply avoid showing up for the draft and attempt to function without a military ID card. Besides facing limited employment prospects, these men are vulnerable to being forced into service through periodic army sweeps of poor neighborhoods.