Bolivia
Military: Bolivia
Military branches:
Bolivian Armed Forces: Bolivian Army (Ejercito Boliviano, EB), Bolivian Naval Force (Fuerza Naval Boliviana, FNB; includes Marines), Bolivian Air Force (Fuerza Aerea Boliviana, FAB) (2013)
Military service age and obligation:
18-49 years of age for 12-month compulsory male and female military service; Bolivian citizenship required; 17 years of age for voluntary service; when annual number of volunteers falls short of goal, compulsory recruitment is effected, including conscription of boys as young as 14; 15-19 years of age for voluntary premilitary service, provides exemption from further military service (2013)
Manpower available for military service:
males age 16-49: 2,472,490
females age 16-49: 2,535,768 (2010 est.)
Manpower fit for military service:
males age 16-49: 1,762,260
females age 16-49: 2,013,281 (2010 est.)
Manpower reaching militarily significant age annually:
male: 108,334
female: 104,945 (2010 est.)
Military expenditures:
country comparison to the world: 143
Transnational Issues: Bolivia
Disputes - international:
Chile and Peru rebuff Bolivia's reactivated claim to restore the Atacama corridor, ceded to Chile in 1884, but Chile offers instead unrestricted but not sovereign maritime access through Chile for Bolivian natural gas; contraband smuggling, human trafficking, and illegal narcotic trafficking are problems in the porous areas of the border with Argentina
Illicit drugs:
world's third-largest cultivator of coca (after Colombia and Peru) with an estimated 35,000 hectares under cultivation in 2009, an increase of ten percent over 2008; third largest producer of cocaine, estimated at 195 metric tons potential pure cocaine in 2009, a 70 percent increase over 2006; transit country for Peruvian and Colombian cocaine destined for Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Europe; weak border controls; some money-laundering activity related to narcotics trade; major cocaine consumption (2008)