Alec Yenikomshian

Armenia and the Diaspora Must Act Now to Avert National Demise

Armenia and the Armenian people are on the threshold of a pan-national demographic catastrophe; that is if they haven't crossed the threshold already.

If they don't take radical and decisive steps to alter the situation, the calamity will surely engulf Armenia and the diaspora and, in the span of a few decades, the government and people will not be able to avert death. The cause of the calamity is the dominant economic, social, political and psychological situation in Armenia today that, in turn, is almost totally the product of a regime that guarantees the monopolistic interests of one group of individuals.

A change of this regime isn't only a necessity in terms of the demand for the establishment of justice. The immediate and complete change of the regime and its replacement by a system that corresponds to the needs of all the people is the only way to save Armenia and the Armenian people from unavoidable death.

The Looming Demographic Catastrophe Trends in Armenia Population trends do not bode well for Armenia - According to official statistics, the population of the Republic of Armenian now stands at 3.2 million. It comes as a surprise to no one that this figure is inflated.

Even the RoA Migration Agency, based on conducted studies, confirms that during the past twenty years from 700,000 to 1.3 million people have left Armenia for good (advancing the number of 700,000 evidently serves the country’s authorities’ to continue claiming a current population level of 3.2 million; the number of 1.3 million is closer to reality). In reality, one can safely surmise that presently, on this portion of the Armenian plateau, (RoA, Artsakh and Javakhk) there resides at best 2.5 million individuals. We arrive at this number according to the following logic. In 1989, some 4 million individuals were living on this same territory. From that year on, at least 1.5 million (about 38% of the population) emigrated.

During the same period the natural demographic growth rate was almost zero. - Based on current official numbers, certain international studies predict that by 2050 Armenia will have a population of 2,334,000. This is a 27-28% drop when compared to the contrived 3.2 million of today. In reality, if current trends continue, one can predict that in forty years, the rate of depopulation will be much higher. Without exaggeration, if current trends continue, one can predict that the population on this territory will be less than one million souls.

This would constitute the final stage of the demise of the Armenian state and the Armenian people. Why such a calamitous prediction? If the population has dropped by 1.5 million during the past twenty years, then to assume that during the next forty years it will drop by another 1.5 million is not an exaggeration but rather, perhaps, baseless optimism.

During the past two years, the exodus from Armenia has once again picked up steam and all the numbers are there to be convinced that it will continue and intensify. For a number of economic and psychological reasons, people are continually leaving the country. An important sector of rural residents no longer farm the land, viewing such work senseless and unprofitable given the conditions that reign.

They have sought their fortunes outside of Armenia. An important portion of young people, whether or not they have a college education, see no long-term prospects in Armenia and have left or are looking for ways to leave. Young and mid-aged professionals continue to leave with the expectation of receiving a wage appropriate to their fields of expertise or in search of opportunities of greater self-fulfilment.

A not insignificant portion of owners of small and mid-sized businesses, tired and fed-up with the unending artificial obstacles placed before them, have refused to live with the empty illusions of reform and leave. Young families that live in relatively good conditions are also hitting the road, concerned as they are with their children's future and convinced that the future does not bode well in Armenia and offers no real prospects.

Even many of the just past adolescence children of the newly rich, mostly spoiled, prefer to live abroad, since they find life in Armenia no longer adequately interesting. - Parallel to the exodus, the other factor conditioning the demographic situation is the natural growth rate. Here too, the long-term prospects are not encouraging, top put it mildly. The ratios of elderly to the young, of female to male, within the remaining population are skewered and distorted to the detriment of the latter. In many villages, only 1 or 2 births are registered every year as opposed to 15-20 deaths.

A large number of young people, not having the resources to provide for a family, never get married. Just to keep the current population numbers stable, each woman must bear, on average, 2.1 children during her childbearing years. Meanwhile, in Armenia, this average is 1.36. It is a known fact that during the last several years, it has been youngsters born in the 1980's that reached their childbearing period; a generation that in numbers was the largest in the history of Soviet Armenia in terms of relative births.

Instead, this generation that should have become the main impetus for growth in the 2000's, gave birth to a unprecedented small number of children. If there were up to 80,000 births registered yearly during the 1980's, then only around 40,000 births have been registered annually since the year 2,000. This drastic drop in childbirths is the result of four factors:

1. Emigration - the result of which a sizeable portion of the 1980's generation wasn't in Armenia
2. Concerns about raising and caring for children due to poor socio-economic conditions
3. Decrease in the number of marriages due to socio-economic distortions and the numerical imbalance between the sexes
4. Independent of other factors, the tendency to have less children due to changes in socio-cultural traditions and preconceptions, when compared to previous generations.

These four factors that negatively impact on childbirth levels are present today as well and their influence will grow stronger in the decade to come. However, a totally new factor will come into play in the coming decade at full force, seriously negatively affecting the growth rate. Those born in the 1990's will reach their childbearing years.

This was a decade when the number of annual births, for obvious reason, hovered between 30,000 - 40,000. If,crudely put, not more than 40,000 children were born annually out of a generation of 80,000, we can imagine how many kids will be born from a generation of less than 40,000.

Given the existence of these factors and in the case that these tendencies continue, the precipitous drop in new generations threatens to have no end, continuing from year to year, decade to decade. In the case of continued exodus and the unobstructed drop in birthrate levels, the forecast of Armenia having a population of only one million by 2050 could be regarded as overly optimistic.

Below are some demographic indices culled from the CIA World Factbook regarding how Armenia ranked globally in 2009: Population growth - 205th place Fertility (number of children per woman) - 201st Births( per 1,000) - 161st Deaths (per 1,000) - 97th Net migration rate - 159th - In face of the pending demographic calamity in Armenia, what are the trends in the neighboring countries? The emerging picture is very disconcerting, to say the least. According to various predictions, Turkey's population will exceed 100 million by 2050 ( even though 20-35% being Kurds). Iran's population will top 100 million of which 30-40% will be Azeris living in the proximity of Armenia.

By 2050, Azerbaijan is expected to have a population of 10-12 million. In reality this figure might be construed as inflated, because demographic statistics in Azerbaijan, just as in Armenia and Georgia, are highly suspect. Taking the entire picture into account, however, this cannot be seen as any consolation. In the end, the demographic picture of neighboring Georgia in the long-term is just as bleak as Armenia.

To get a more complete picture, we can compare the predictions for various age groups in 2050. By 2050, those in the 15-59 age bracket will comprise 48.9% of the total population in Armenia; 57.3% in Azerbaijan and 58% in Turkey. Those over the age of 60 in Armenia by 2050 will comprise 37.6% of the population, 24.7% in Azerbaijan and 24.8% in Turkey.

Conclusion - A few decades hence, Armenia, with a population of one million in the best case scenario, will have totally lost its capacity to resist. It will be incapable of guaranteeing security in the military, economic, demographic, cultural and many other sectors. The state will have permanently lost the objective and subjective levers guaranteeing its continued survivability. T

he remaining one million will have no chance of escaping being swallowed up by the hundreds of millions of jaws surrounding them. - The only sure way of saving Armenia from certain demise is to halt the exodus, ensure a high birth rate and organize immigration. The only way to ensure the desired results is to remove all the impediments that prevent their implementation.

To be continued (Next: Trends in Diaspora)