YEREVAN. – Forty-thousand young men in Armenia will not be able to find girlfriends. 

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Armenia Executive Director Garik Hayrapetyan stated the above-said during a press conference on Tuesday. 

In his words, the cause for this phenomenon is the gradually increasing number of abortions based on the gender of the fetus.

“If you go to the schools now, you will see that the boys are 15 to 20 percent more than the girls in any elementary and intermediate classroom [in Armenia],” Hayrapetyan stressed.  

He added that this problem exists in the entire Caucasus, where parents first prefer to have boys.

Selective abortions were not performed in the Soviet times, since there was no ultrasound in the ex-USSR.

“Hence, it was impossible to determine the sex of the child before birth,” Garik Hayrapetyan added.