Report of the WG on the Universal Periodic Review on Finland

In the Working Group, the United Kingdom “welcomed the attempts to end discrimination against conscientious objectors through the reforms of the Non-Military Service Act. [but] encouraged Finland to go further in reducing the duration of non-military service and to establish parity between the length of non-military service and the average, rather than the longest possible, length of military service.”
Although the issue was not included among the formal responses to recommendations, the Finnish delegation did respond to the United Kingdom's comments during the Working Group dialogue itself, stating that “On the important question on the length of the Finnish non-military service that has recently been shortened and is now equal to the longest duration of military service, under the Military Services Act, [...] the Finnish Constitutional Committee of Parliament [had] compared the burden of non-military and military services and the overall burden irrespective of the length was assessed to be more or less equal between the two forms of services and this is the reasoning behind the length of non-military service.”