Today, at Yerevan Blitz Info press club held a press conference devoted to the issues of skewed sex-at-birth ratio in Armenia and prenatal sex selection. Garik Hayrapetyan, UNFPA Armenia Assistant Representative was the guest speaker to the press conference.

As Mr. Hayrapetyan mentioned, if the practice of sex selective abortions continues, Armenia will lose around 93.000 women by the year of 2060. It is already 20 years since this phenomenon has been noticed in the country, considerably more boys than girls being born, which has resulted in the current sex-at-birth ratio of 114 boys to 100 girls.

In his comment dated January 15, 2014, the Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Nils Muižnieks had referred to skewed sex ratios at birth that have been documented in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, but also in some countries in the Balkans, most commonly in Albania and to a lesser extent Montenegro, Kosovo, and parts of “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The Commissioner had noted that sex-selective abortions were discriminatory and should be banned, in particular through criminalization. Mr. Hayrapetyan noted that criminalization aspect of the solution should be approached with utmost care not to boost corruption risks. As an important component of the solution Mr. Hayrapetyan indicated increasing the role of women and the value of the girl child in the society.