National Youth Service :
A Global Perspective
Contents
Introduction
1: National Service Programs and Proposals
Profiles of National Service
2: Aspects of National Youth Service
Appendix A: Global Conference Participants, June 18-21, 1992
Appendix B: Annotated Bibliography
|
|
2.Aspects of national youth service
Civilian Service or Military Service?
Mrs. Maakwe's questions were never far from the conferees' minds. The most dramatic response was made by Dr. Jurgen Kuhlmann, senior research fellow of the German Armed Forces Institute for Social Research. He said that if Zivildienst, an alternative service program for conscientious objectors to military service, were to be eliminated together with compulsory military service, the persons now entrusted to the care of approximately 90,000 young men doing Zivildienst would have to do without those services. He noted that "critics therefore have been suspicious that the compulsory military service must be maintained to supply an adequate number of young men doing Zivildienst in order to make up for the emergency situation in nursing and welfare work."
Dr. Kuhlmann also reported on a recent survey of 16- to 25-year-olds in the newly unified Germany, who were asked whether they would serve in a compulsory civic service with seven options. Only 29 percent said they would be willing to perform military service, whereas 88 percent said they would be willing to "protect the environment" and 81 percent said they would be willing to "take care of children."
The issue of civilian versus military service is also central to the emergence of national service in both France and Zimbabwe.
General Raymond Caire, General Secretary of France's Interministerial Commission on Civilian Forms of National Service, noted that already some 16,000 young people in France either have volunteered for civilian forms of national service or are conscripts performing alternative service as conscientious objectors. He said that his Commission, which was created in 1990, is to report to the Prime Minister in 1993 on new forms of civilian national service. "As in Germany," he said, "we are at a crossroad. The military service is going to diminish and civilian forms to grow. But if [compulsory] military service is abolished, my point of view is that civilian forms will continue on a voluntary basis."
Philippe Dalbavie, Charge de mission of the General Secretariat for National Defense, was asked why -- unlike that in the United States -- the French ethic seems to call for a form of national service if military conscription is abolished. He replied that the tradition was traceable to the lev?e en masse of two centuries ago and was a means to integrate all French people into the same Republic. He said there is a "current need to integrate because we now have minority and ethnic problems. National service is the means to resolve those problems because schools are not doing it." Mr. Dalbavie agreed with the observation that national service in France is viewed as a common national experience intended to establish a common identity.
Brigadier A. Mutambara was appointed by Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe to make recommendations for transforming the current national service from an institution oriented to military service to one that would engage young men and women to work on projects vital to national development while giving them skills training and experience. He said his plan, now in the draft stage, would challenge young people from all walks of life to enter national service. Brigadier Mutambara said his report to President Mugabe would be shaped in part by what he learned at the conference.
|
National Youth Service : A Global Perspective
Donald J. Eberly, Editor
National Service Secretariat , Washington, D.C.Based on the advanced papers and discussions held at the conference, National Youth Service : A Global Perspective, held at the Wingspread Conference Center, Wisconsin, 18-21 June 1992.
About this online book
|