The Ministry of Defense postponed the mandatory military registration of women for a year

The Ministry of defense of Ukraine has postponed the mandatory military registration of women for another year — until October 1, 2023. The General Staff said that today there is no urgent need to increase the number of women on the military Register in the state.

The main Ministry of Defense has prepared an order that once again postponed the deadline for taking women of a number of professions/specialties on military registration for another year — until October 1, 2023. The document was signed on September 6 by Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov.Also, the parliament is currently finalizing a draft law that should regulate the issue of military registration of women and make it exclusively voluntary, even during martial law. Details

Deputy minister Anna Malyar reminded that the norm on mandatory registration of women of the relevant professions/specialties for military registration is regulated by law.

"This order does not change the norms of the current legislation, but it will allow the Committee, and then the parliament, to finalize and amend the legislation in order to resolve this issue. We can only postpone the deadline within the limits of our powers. Within a year, parliamentarians will be able to establish at the legislative level that the military registration of women of the relevant professions/specialties is exclusively voluntary. Work in the Verkhovna Rada committee is actively continuing. So no panic or betrayal. There are no restrictions for women," explained Anna Malyar.

The relevant committee of the Verkhovna Rada is working on a draft law "on amendments to Article 1 of the law of Ukraine "on military duty and military service".

After the adoption of relevant amendments to the legislation on exclusively voluntary registration of women for military service, there will be no need to postpone the deadline again by orders of the Ministry of Defense.

According to the General Staff, the experience of deploying all military units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other military formations to full wartime States shows that now there is no urgent need to increase the number of women on the military Register in the state.

DOU wrote here in detail about who exactly and under what circumstances the military registration of women was supposed to affect. In the full list of specialties, applicants of which were subject to military registration, it is also mentioned: "Software Engineering", "Computer Science, Information Systems and technologies", "Computer Engineering", "System Analysis", "cybersecurity", "automation and computer-integrated technologies", "telecommunications and radio engineering".

Artem Krikun-Trush, a military lawyer and manager at PwC Legal, noted that in order for registration for women to be truly voluntary, it is necessary to make changes to the legislation.

"The issue of voluntary military service of women is mentioned in the law only in the context of peacetime. Therefore, whether a woman with the necessary profession wants to register for military service or not, the legislation allows her to do this without her consent with the help of information from an educational institution, employer, and then, in wartime, call up for military service," the lawyer stressed.