BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

22/01/2007

Belarus Not to Draft Married to Army

In an effort to improve demographic situation in Belarus, Defense Ministry of the country ordered not to call to arms the married young men. This new initiative of the ministry hasn't been legalized yet, being introduced this year as an experiment, TUT.BY portal reported referring to Ezhednevnik (Daily) internet edition.

Previously, a draftee should have a wife on the pregnancy leave or a child below three years of age or two children depending on him to get a delay. But this practice has borne no fruit, the Defense Ministry said, as the young men had to leave their wives and go to the army straight after marriage. Additional flaws are that some young wives won't remain faithful to their husbands, negatively affecting moral and psychological condition of soldiers.

So the masterminds reasoned that encouraging young people to marry by service delay will help them establish good families. The marriage status of a draftee will be checked each year to avoid pro forma marriages.

Overall, the draft committees of Belarus have around 50,000 registered as potential draftees. The plan is to call to color roughly 8,000 till the end of this January. But the problem of attempted evasion of service is still rather acute in the country, though its extent has lowered a bit once a criminal responsibility was introduced for the failure to show up at the drafting committee.

Source:

http://www.kommersant.com/p-9911/draft_married/