Military service age and obligation: 18 years of age for voluntary military service; when annual number of volunteers falls short of goal, compulsory recruitment is effected, including conscription of boys as young as 14; one estimate holds that 40% of the armed forces are under the age of 18, with 50% of those under the age of 16; conscript tour of duty - 12 months (2002)
Manpower available for military service:
males age 18-49: 1,923,234
females age 18-49: 2,007,315 (2005 est.)
Manpower fit for military service:
males age 18-49: 1,311,414
females age 18-49: 1,502,177 (2005 est.)
Manpower reaching military service age annually:
males age 18-49: 101,101
females age 18-49: 98,671 (2005 est.)
Military expenditures - dollar figure:
$130 million (2005 est.)
Military expenditures - percent of GDP:
1.4% (2005 est.)
Transnational Issues Bolivia
Disputes - international:
Chile rebuffs Bolivia's reactivated claim to restore the Atacama
corridor, ceded to Chile in 1884, offering instead unrestricted but
not sovereign maritime access through Chile for Bolivian natural gas
and other commodities
Trafficking in persons:
current situation: Bolivia is a source and transit country for men,
women, and children trafficked for the purposes of labor and sexual
exploitation to Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, as well as to Spain;
children are trafficked internally for sexual exploitation, forced
mining, and agricultural labor; illegal migrants from Asia
transiting Bolivia are vulnerable as trafficking victims
tier rating: Tier 2 Watch List - Bolivia has failed to show evidence
of increasing efforts to combat trafficking in the areas of
prosecutions and victim protection
Illicit drugs:
world's third-largest cultivator of coca (after Colombia and Peru)
with an estimated 26,500 hectares under cultivation in August 2005,
an 8% increase from 2004; intermediate coca products and cocaine
exported mostly to or through Brazil, Argentina, and Chile to
European drug markets; cultivation steadily increasing despite
eradication and alternative crop programs; money-laundering activity
related to narcotics trade, especially along the borders with Brazil
and Paraguay