Report: Armenia named world's second most militarized country

PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenia is the world's second most militarized country, according to a recent report from the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC).

The country is only lagging behind Israel which has been topping the list since 2007. Other countries in the top 10 are Oman, Bahrain, Singapore, Saudi-Arabia, Brunei, Russia, Kuwait and Jordan. Azerbaijan and Georgia, meanwhile, are ranked the 16th and 37th, respectively.

"The still smouldering conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region continues to keep militarization in the South Caucasus at a very high level," the report says.

The Global Militarization Index (GMI) 2020 covers 151 states and is based on the latest available figures (in most cases data for 2019). Against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, this year’s focus is the link between militarization and health security. The GMI compares, for example, a country’s military expenditure with its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and its health expenditure. It contrasts the total number of military and paramilitary forces in a country with the number of physicians. Finally, it studies the number of heavy weapons available to a country’s armed forces.