Geography
Armenia occurs as landlocked country, lacking a seacoast or a port. These are ordinarily considered to become technically section of Asia, however when it besides has tremendously within commons sustaining Europe, it is periodically claimed to fall inside that continent. These are incurred between a Black & a Caspian Seas, bordered on the northerly & east by Georgia and Azerbaijan, & on the south and west by Iran and Turkey.

A terrain is mostly mountainous, with convenient readily rivers and few forests. A climate is upland continental: hot summers and cold winters. A land rises to 4,095 m above sea-level at Mount Aragats, and there are no point is beneath 400 m. Mount Ararat, regarded by the Armenians as a symbol of their l&, is the highest mountain in the region and utilized to become section of Armenia until around 1915, when it fell to the Turks.

Armenia is trying to location its environmental problems. It has established the Ministry of Nature & severity Protection & introduced taxation for air & a body of water pollution and firm waste disposal, whose revenues come utilized for environmental protection activities. Armenia is interested around cooperating using more members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS, a class action of Dozen previous Soviet republics) and sustaining members of the international community in environmental issues. A Armenian Government is working toward closing its Nuclear Power Plant at Medzamor touching Yerevan as soon as guide energy sources come identified.

Economy
Until independence, Armenia's economy was largely industry-based – chemicals, electronics, machinery, processed food, synthetic rubber, and textile – and extremely contingent outside resources. Agriculture contributed only 20% of nett poop product & 10% of employment prior to a breakup of the Soviet Union inside 1991. Armenian mines make copper, zinc, gold, and lead. A immense majority of energy is produced by owning fuel imported from Russia, including gas and nuclear fuel (for its one nuclear power plant); the independent domesticated energy source is hydroelectric. Little numbers of coal, gas, & petroleum have not eventually been developed.

Rather more Up to date Independent States of the previous Soviet Union, Armenia's economy suffers from either the bequest of a centrally planned economy and the breakdown of previous Soviet index trading system. Soviet investment within & trend lines of Armenian industry has virtually disappeared, therefore that couple of major enterprises come however suspire to work. Additionally, a results of the 1988 Spitak Earthquake, which killed to a higher degree 25,000 population & manufactured 500,000 homeless, come however existence felt. A conflict by owning Azerbaijan above Nagorno-Karabakh has non been resolved. A closure of Azerbaijani & Turkish borders has devastated a economy, because Armenia depends in outside the diapers of energy & virtually all raw materials. L& routes across Georgia and Iran come short or even undependable. GDP fell nearly 60% from either 1989 until 1992–1993. A national currency, a dram, suffered hyperinflation for the 1st years when its introduction inside 1993.

Still, the food & drug administration was breathe to produce wide-ranging economic reforms that paid off within dramatically moo inflation and steadily incubation. A 1994 prevent-truce in a Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has likewise helped the economy. Armenia has experienced hard economic incubation since 1995, building on a turnaround that began the last season, & inflation has been negligible for the past many years. Freshly sectors, like precious stone processing and jewelry making, information and communication technology, and possibly tourism are beginning to supplement more traditional sectors in the economy, like agriculture.

This steadily economic progress has earned Armenia increasing trend lines from either international institutions. A International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), & more international financial institutions (IFIs) & foreign countries come extending considerable grants and loans. Loans to Armenia since 1993 exceed $1.One billion. These loans come targeted at reducing dollars & cents deficit, stabilizing a currency; getting personal businesses; energy; a agriculture, food processing, transport, & health & education sectors; and on-going rehabilitation in the earthquake zone. The food and drug administration joined the World Trade Organization on February 5, 2003. However one of a independent sources of foreign straight investments remains a Armenian diaspora, world health organization finances major area of the reconstruction of infrastructure & more public projects. Existence a growing popular state, Armenia too hopes for further financial help from either the American Globe.

The liberal foreign investment law was approved around June 1994, & a Law within Privatizatiin was adopted in 1997, besides as a program on state property privatisation. Continued progress may depend on a ability of the government to strengthen its macroeconomic management, including increasing revenue collection, improving the investment climate, & making strides against corruption.

Demographics
Armenithe has a people of 2,982,904 (July 2005 eastern time.) & is the 2nd virtually all densely populated of the previous Soviet republics. There is a good condition of people decline, by owning far flung emigration increasing since the break-higher of the USSR. a drastically decreased fertility is non about sufficient to keep the people from either come by the yearn term. A select few observers estimate that when numbers of when a single-third of Armenia's people sleep in Russia illegally, and that Armenia has those days are gone than astir two million residents. Occasionally use at times found that this may pose the threat whenever Azerbaijan, which has had the tremendously less severe condition by owning demographic decline, tries to regain its misused territories.

Ethnic Armenians make up 97.9% of the people. Virtually all of Azerbaijan's when sizable people keep close at h& left since independence, and 100% of the Armenians inside Azerbaijan nowadays sleep in Nagorno-Karabakh and the occupied territories. There is a big Armenian diaspora, with communities existent tons across the world. Kurds make up I.3%, & Russian 0.5%. There are little communities of Assyrians, Georgians, Greeks and Ukrainians.

A predominant religion within Armenia is Christianity. A roots of the Armenian Church go back to the 3rd and 4th centuries. Armenia is considered a number one united states to use at times adopted Christianity as a state religion, around 301. Ended 95% of Armenian Christians belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church, a form of Oriental (Non-Chalcedonian) Orthodoxy, which is a super ritualistic, conservative church, about like to the Coptic and Syrian churches. Armenithe besides has a people of evangelistic Protestants, Catholics & followers of the Armenian traditional religion. A Yazidi Kurds, who sleep in a american a share of the united states, practice Yazidism. A Armenian Catholic Church is headquartered within Bzoummar, Lebanon.

Ethnic Azeris and Kurds who lived in a united states prior to the Karabakh conflict practiced Islam, but virtually all Azeris were caused away from Armenia into Azerbaijan within 1988-1991 at the beginning of the conflict. When you took the equivalent time, Armenia as well received a big inflow of Armenians scattered throughout Azerbaijan.

Culture
Armenians use at times their have extremely distinctive alphabet and language. 96% of the population in the united states speak Armenian, spell 75.8% of the people speaks Russian as well. A big literacy rate inside Armenia is 99% [http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/am.html]. Virtually all adults around Yerevan might communicate around Russian, when English is increasing in popularity.

Caucasian hospitality is legendary and stems from either ancient tradition. Social gatherings focused in grand presentations naturally when course of intricately prepared, easily-seasoned (but not spicy-hot) food. the persons or even hostess may typically put morsels in a guest's shell anytime these are empty or even even fill his or her glass whilst it gets on line. When the serving or even even deuce these are acceptable to scraps courteously or, additional only, upright leave a trifle uneaten food.

A city’s National Art Gallery has to a higher degree 16,000 works that date back to the Middle Ages. It painting by numbers of European masters. A Modern Art Museum, a Children’s Picture Gallery, & a Martiros Saryan Museum are just two or three of the more noteworthy collections of art within display in Yerevan. Furthersir thomas more, numbers of personal galleries come operating, using numerous more opening both month. It feature rotating exhibitions & sales.

The world-class Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra performs at the attractively refurbished city Operthe, in which professional people can likewise attend a to the full year of opera. Additionally, many chamber ensembles come extremely regarded for their musicianship, including a National Chamber Orchestra of Armenia and the Serenade Orchestra. Classical music can as well exist as heard at one of many little venues, including a State Music Conservatory & a Chamber Orchestra Hall. Jazz is popular, especially in the summer after survive performances come the regular occurrence at one of the city’s several outdoor cafes.

Yerevan’s Vernisage (arts & crafts market), roughly Republic Square, bustles using hundreds of trafficker selling a kind of crafts, numbers of of superb craftsmanship, in weekends & Wednesdays (though the choice is good deal reduced mid-midweekly). the market offers woodcarving, antiques, ticket lace, & a h&-knotted wool rug and kilims that come a Caucasus specialty. Obsidian, which is detected locally, is crafted into an amazing assortment of jewellery & cosmetic objects. Armenian gold smithery enjoys an extended & distinguished tradition, populating of these corner of the market using the choice of gold things. Soviet relics & souvenirs of recent Russian manufacture—nesting dolls, watches, enamel boxes so in, come besides available at a Vernisage.

Through from either the Opera, a popular art market fills a second city park on the weekends. Armenithe’s hanker history as a carrefour of the ancient globe has resulted around a landscape by using unnumerable fascinating archeologic web sites to choose. Medieval, Iron Age, Bronze Age and even Stone Age sites are a lot inside two or three hours cause from either a city. Well-nigh a virtually all outstanding remain virtually undiscovered, permitting visitant to look at churches & fort in their original settings.

A Our contries University of Armenia has postgraduate software online inside Business & Law, among others. A institution owes its being to a united efforts of the Government of Armenia, the Armenian General Benevolent Union, USAID, and a Boalt Hall School of Law at a University of California at Berkeley.

the extension software download & a library at AUA form a fresh focal point for English-language rational life in the city. Numerous of the country’s virtually all successful immature enterpriser come graduates of this institution.