A short history of the Ex-Services Human Rights Association of Australia: a group of brave returned servicemen and women who protested the Vietnam War.
Draftees are sworn into the U.S. Army in 1940.
AP Photo
Questions include whether women should be compelled to register, as men are, and whether the draft and draft registration should exist at all.
A large group of American male Reserve Officers Training Corps students gather to protest the U.S. draft in the late 1930s.
Anthony Potter Collection/Getty Images
An Iranian general’s killing sparked fears of war and a draft in the US. Those are old fears, says a scholar who contends it’s a myth that during the two world wars, men signed up in droves to fight.
Soldiers in Anzac Cove. The war had driven Australians apart in the demands it made upon the people.
State Library of Victoria
Labor Leader Arthur Calwell tried to leverage public opposition to conscription to gain support during the 1966 election, calling it a “sinister word” for Australians. The tactic failed.
An anti-conscription rally in Melbourne, 1916.
Heritage Council of Victoria
It’s time the Australians who voiced vociferous opposition to war in general and conscription in particular were commemorated as an important part of our history.
Prime Minister Billy Hughes worked hard to quash rebellion over conscription during the first world war.
Australian Prime Ministers
Rock music against military conscription during 1980s South Africa resonated with wider fault lines in Afrikaner society - this as the apartheid regime’s grip on power started to slip.
The Caracal battalion, two-thirds of whose members are women, was established in 2004.
Amir Cohen/Reuters
The IDF wants to encourage more women to enlist, but it also wants to encourage Orthodox men, who avoid contact with the opposite sex. How will it manage the conflict?
The cover of the South African afro-jazz band Batsumi’s self-titled album, which was designed by its bassist Zulu Bidi.
Sometimes album sleeves reveal little about the music. Instead they illuminate the society it came from, exposing unexpected stories of people, art forms and struggles.
Des van Rooyen, cooperative governance minister and new treasurer-general of the MK Military Veterans Association.
eNCA.com
MK, the army of the then banned ANC, electrified millions of oppressed people to rise against the apartheid regime. Today, its veterans are being used in factional battles within the ruling party.
Rand Paul’s amendment is rooted in the Constitution.
REUTERS/Brian Frank
Congress is debating the power of government to use a military draft. An Ole Miss historian explains how this power is rooted in our nation’s founding document.
Thinking about Australia’s war experience in comparison with others will soften some of the hyperbole surrounding Anzac.
AAP/Jake Sims
Armistice Day provides a moment to reflect on Australia’s self-identity in comparison to other nations that experienced the first world war and commemorate it to this day.