Country profilesArmenia

Humanitarian profile

Armenia is vulnerable to earthquakes. In 1988, an estimated 25,000 people died in an earthquake, one of the most deadly in modern times. Earthquakes strike Armenia annually causing damage to infrastructure and housing as well as killing people.

Armenia is also still officially at war with neighbouring Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Thousands of people died in the conflict and thousands more fled the region, one of the biggest humanitarian crises in the former Soviet Union. A ceasefire maintains a shaky peace in Nagorno-Karabakh but soldiers on both sides die each month in sporadic shootouts.

Country snapshot

Sandwiched between Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iran, Armenia is the smallest country in the volatile South Caucasus which straddles Europe and Asia. It also has no direct access to the sea. Armenia is further hemmed in because its borders with Azerbaijan and Turkey are closed. Armenia is still officially at war with Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Turkey is Azerbaijan’s traditional ally and it closed the border with Armenia in the early 1990s although some diplomatic relations resumed in 2009 and analysts have said that the border may reopen. Armenia also accuses Turkey of perpetrating genocide against ethnic Armenians living in the east of the country towards the end of the World War I. Turkey refutes this genocide claim.

About 3 million people live in Armenia, roughly the same as Albania and Oman. Mountains and river valleys dominate its topography. Yerevan is the capital of Armenia. It is famed for its view of Mount Ararat which lies just over the border with Turkey. Mount Ararat sits in lands that used to belong to Armenia and its profile forms a central part of Armenia’s national coat of arms.

Government

According to Armenia’s constitution, the president is head of state and head of the government. The current President is Serzh Sargsyan. He took over in 2008 from his political ally Robert Kocharyan when he won a disputed election. Clashes between opposition demonstrators and the security forces killed 10 people and triggered a state of emergency in the aftermath of Armenia’s 2008 presidential election.

Armenia’s President appoints the Prime Minster. Sargsyan appointed former Central Bank governor Tigran Sargsyan, who is no relation, as Prime Minister. The legislative body in Armenia is the 131-seat National Assembly. The assembly is elected every four years, 41 members directly and 90 through proportional representation. Parties supporting the President dominate the National Assembly.

Economy

Armenia has a national income of about $16 billion, similar to Nicaragua or Mauritius. The Soviet Union developed Armenia as a centre of heavy industry, but this collapsed after the 1992 breakup of the Soviet Union. In the early 1990s, Armenia suffered from hyperinflation, its economy shrank and living standards declined but in the 2000s, alongside most countries in the Soviet Union, Armenia enjoyed an economic boom. The 2008/9 global economic downturn hit Armenia hard, however. In 2009, Armenia’s economy shrank by around 14 percent. Economists have said, though, that the economy is now on the path to recovery.

Agriculture plays a major role in Armenia’s economy as does a diversified and modernised industrial base. Remittances are also very important to Armenia. Large Armenian communities live in Europe, the United States, Lebanon and Russia. Remittances from these communities accounts for about 9 percent of national income.

Total government revenues from taxes as a proportion of total GDP is low at less than 20 percent, according to the United States-based think-tank the Heritage Foundation. Armenia pulled through the global economic downturn with loans from Russia, the World Bank and the IMF.

History

Armenia’s power and influence as an independent state ebbed and flowed through history, at times dominating the South Caucasus, during other times acting as a vassal state and part of a far wider empire controlled by a foreign power. When World War I started, Armenia was divided between the Ottoman Empire in the west and the Russian empire in the east. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians died in eastern Turkey between 1915 and 1917 in what Armenians describe as genocide. Turkey refutes this and says famine and disease killed thousands of people on both sides. The issue still remains a thorn in Armenia-Turkey relations.

After World War I ended, Armenia formed a short lived independent state before being annexed into the Soviet Union in 1922. On August 23 1991, Armenia became the first member of the Soviet Union outside the Baltic states to declare independence from the Soviet Union.

By this time relations with Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh had already broken down and the two sides had been fighting since 1988. A ceasefire brought temporary peace to the region in 1994 but no permanent solution has been found. Ethnic Armenians currently control Ngorno-Karabakh but its independence is not internationally recognised. The fighting was one of the most fierce to break out in the former Soviet Union. An estimated 30,000 people died and about 1 million were displaced.

Legal snapshot

Armenia’s current legal system is based on the Civil Code. The Constitutional Court is the highest court in Armenia. The National Assembly selects five judges for the Constitutional Court and the President selects four judges. Armenia has a Court of Appeals.