page_title: Armenia
section_title: Human rights and freedom
hierarchical_section_title: Armenia / Government and politics / Human rights and freedom
caption_attribution_description: English: 2018 Armenian revolution.
context_page_description: Armenia, officially the Republic of Armenia, is a landlocked country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located in Western Asia, on the Armenian Highlands, it is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, the de facto independent Republic of Artsakh and Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran and Azerbaijan's exclave of Nakhchivan to the south.
  Armenia is a unitary, multi-party, democratic nation-state with an ancient cultural heritage. Urartu was established in 860 BC and by the 6th century BC it was replaced by the Satrapy of Armenia. The Kingdom of Armenia reached its height under Tigranes the Great in the 1st century BC and became the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion in the late 3rd or early 4th century AD. The official date of state adoption of Christianity is 301. The ancient Armenian kingdom was split between the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires around the early 5th century. Under the Bagratuni dynasty, the Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia was restored in the 9th century. Declining due to the wars against the Byzantines, the kingdom fell in 1045 and Armenia was soon after invaded by the Seljuk Turks.
context_section_description: Human rights in Armenia tend to be better than those in most former Soviet republics and have drawn closer to acceptable standards, especially economically. Nonetheless, there are still several considerable problems.
  Armenia scored 4.79 on The Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index published in January 2019 (data for 2018). Although still classified as "hybrid regime", Armenia recorded the strongest improvement among European countries and reached its ever-best score since calculation began in 2006.
  Armenia is classified as "partly free" in the 2019 report (with data from 2018) by Freedom House, which gives it a score of 51 out of 100, which is 6 points ahead of the previous estimate.
  Armenia has recorded an unprecedented progress in the 2019 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders, improving its position by 19 points and ranking 61st on the list. The publication also confirms the absence of cases of killed journalists, citizen journalists or media assistants.
  Armenia ranks 54th in the 2017 report The Human Freedom Index (with data from 2016) published by Canada's Fraser Institute.
  Armenia ranked 29th for economic freedom and 76th for personal freedom among 159 countries in the 2017 Human Freedom Index published by the Cato Institute .
  These classifications may improve when data from 2018, including the period of the velvet revolution and thereafter, is analyzed.
caption: In April 2018, a quasi-authoritarian regime collapsed as a result of a nationwide protest movement in Armenia
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