Armenia Signs U.N. Convention to Protect Disabled People's Rights

Yet another small step in the right direction for Armenia.

Armenia has become the 81st nation to sign this Convention and the third former Soviet nation, after Moldova and Lithuania, to do so.

The purpose of this Convention is to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity.

Signing it is one thing, but completely changing the perspectives of a few million people is something else entirely.

Source: ArmenPress

Armenia Ranks 32nd on Economic Freedom Index

Every year, The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal publish what is known as "Index of Economic Freedom". What is economic freedom, you ask?

The highest form of economic freedom provides an absolute right of property ownership, fully realized freedoms of movement for labor, capital, and goods, and an absolute absence of coercion or constraint of economic liberty beyond the extent necessary for citizens to protect and maintain liberty itself.

In other words, individuals are free to work, produce, consume, and invest in any way they please, and that freedom is both protected by the state and unconstrained by the state.

This year, Armenia ranked 32nd with 69.4%, which puts us under Moderately Free, but only two spots away from Mostly Free! This ranking also makes Armenia the 19th freest among the 41 countries in the European region, which is pretty amazing! However, we ranked poorly in two of the ten freedoms: Property Rights at 30% and Freedom from Corruption at 29%, but did beautifully in two others: Fiscal Freedom at 93.1% and Freedom from Government at 91.6%.

For comparison, here are how some selected countries ranked:

1st - Hong Kong - 89.3%
4th - United States - 82.0%
6th - United Kingdom - 81.6%
19th - Germany - 73.5%
32nd - Armenia - 69.4%
35th - Georgia - 68.7%
37th - Israel - 68.4%
45th - France - 66.1%
60th - Italy - 63.4%
83rd - Turkey - 59.3%
94th - Greece - 57.6%
107th - Azerbaijan - 55.4%
119th - China - 61.6%
120th - Russia - 61.4%
125th - Ukraine - 60.9%
150th - Iran - 57.5%

Anyway, you can see the full list here: 2007 Index of Economic Freedom