Azernews.Az

By Rashid Shirinov

After the recent publication of the statistical data for 2017, Armenians learned that their country’s demography continues to deteriorate. It turned out that today, Armenian citizens are more willing to renounce their citizenship.

Armenian media report that 3,823 Armenian citizens filed applications for the renunciation of Armenian citizenship in 2017. As for the previous years, the relevant structures received 968 such applications in 2012, 1,461 in 2013, 2,407 in 2014, 2,487 in 2015, and 3,863 applications in 2016. Thus, 14,041 people have renounced their Armenian citizenship for the last five years.

While the number of Armenian citizens is decreasing, the number of new Russian citizens of Armenian origin is, on the contrary, increasing. Armenia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs reported that 25,144 Armenians were granted Russian citizenship in 2017, while while 22,264 Armenians became citizens of Russia in 2016.

It is noteworthy that the vast majority of those who emigrate from Armenia are young and mature people. The main reason for their leaving is the accute problem with employment, which plagues the whole country. In this regard, people have to find a way to feed their families, and therefore, they leave their old parents in Armenia and go to other countries for work, mainly to Russia. This, in turn, raises the share of elderly in Armenia’s population.

Obviously, since the youth leaves Armenia, the birth rate declines in the country. The National Statistical Service reported that the number of children born in Armenia in 2017 was 37,699, which is by 7.1 percent less than in 2016.

All these factors negatively affect the number of Armenia’s population. Over the past year, it has decreased by 13,200 to 2,972,900 people. The statistics show that in the past 20 years, more than 1,200,000 people left the country, and this accounts for approximately a third of Armenia’s population.

In this regard, it is unclear what mechanism the Armenian authorities are going to apply to stop the massive exodus of population from the country, given that Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan made a notorious statement last May, in which he claimed that the population of the country will reach 4 million by 2040. This statement became an object of hot discussions and ridicule in the public and expert community of Armenia. Given today’s realities in the country, it is hard to believe that the authorities will be able to make the Armenians stay in their poor and undeveloped country.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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