Armenia

The military defeat sparked an influx of ethnic Armenian refugees fleeing from regions won by Azerbaijan, which added strain to an economy already blighted by war and the pandemic. Armenia has a negative trade balance, importing more than it exports, with vibrant viticulture, manufacturing and mining industries. It counts Russia, China and Iran among its major trading partners. Armenia has been in a balancing act over economic integration with Russia and the West, and in 2013 opted to join the Russian-led Eurasian Customs Union and eventually downsize the ambition of its agreement with the EU.

Armenia held its first multiparty elections in 1995, and shifted from a semi-presidential to parliamentary system in 2015. Representative Government in the country rose sharply between 2016 and 2018, nearing levels seen in its early independence, before plateauing again in 2019. Checks on Government, Impartial Administration and Fundamental Rights each reached their highest recorded scores in 2019 on the wings of the revolution before dropping off in 2020.

The memory of the community’s suffering as a non-Muslim minority group in the Ottoman Empire, which Armenia classifies as a genocide, permeates Armenian political life and defines its geopolitical reality. Ethnic Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from southwestern Azerbaijan in 1988 with Armenian support, leading to the establishment of the de facto Republic of Artsakh. Turkey continues to object to the characterisation of events under the Ottoman Empire as genocide, and has backed Azerbaijan in the conflict, sealing its border with Armenia in 1993. Armenia itself is relatively homogenous - 98 per cent ethnic Armenian but also includes Russian, Kurdish, Yezidi minorities - and Christian under the Armenian Apostolic church.

As the 2020 war over Nagorno-Karabakh ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire, demonstrations again broke out in Yerevan, cracking the door open for members of the old guard to regain some of the influence lost in the 2018 parliamentary elections. The conflict temporarily had a stifling effect on fundamental rights in Armenia, including restrictions on the right to assembly, as well as media freedoms, which have since been relaxed and martial law lifted. As Artsakh moves to implement similar restrictions, and as fresh tensions with Azerbaijan appeared in early 2022, it will be important to scrutinise measures enacted under martial law for signs of unwarranted human rights impacts or unduly protracted restrictions.

Armenia’s hard-won democracy will surely be challenged by the domestic unrest, and it remains to be seen whether the momentum on judicial reform can be sustained and how the future of anti-corruption reforms will be affected. In this respect, the indicators on Judicial Independence and Absence of Corruption will merit particular attention. It also remains to be seen how Armenia will navigate its relationships with regional and international powers as a small state embedded in an increasingly multipolar global power balance; and in particular how Armenia evaluates its reliance on Russia, distracted and weakened from the full-scale invasion of Ukraine launched in 2022, for security and peacekeeping on its borders.