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guidelines as well as organizing training with non-govern-
mental organizations (NGOs).
Actions against gender-based violence
In the last 20 years there has been significant progress in the
prevention of violence against women and girls as well as
gender-based violence in Mongolia. This has been achieved
through working closely with United Nations organizations
and other international organizations.
The Parliament of Mongolia adopted the Law to Combat
Domestic Violence (LCDM) in 2004. The National Centre
Against Violence (NCAV) NGO has been monitoring imple-
mentation of the LCDM and remains in charge of the protection
of domestic violence victims. NCAV recognized that LCDM
needs to link to other laws and interlink between sectors based
on their practice. NCAV initiated the development of a draft
LCDM in 2012 and has collaborated with the Minister of
Justice and the working group. After long-term lobbying, the
police involvement and response to domestic violence cases
has improved. Regular police statistics often include domestic
violence case data based on different locations, ages and dates.
One of the forms of gender-based violence is human traf-
ficking in Mongolia. In 2005, the Government of Mongolia
adopted the National Program on Combating Trafficking in
Persons to protect women and children from sexual exploita-
tion. In addition, Parliament approved the Law on Combating
Trafficking in Persons in 2012. Unfortunately, although the
law was passed its implementing mechanism has been weak.
However, civil society organizations built the National
Anti-Human Trafficking Network, which includes services for
working with victims, prevention as well as the protection of
victims, and NGOs such as the Gender Equality Center, the
Human Security Research Center and the Center for Human
Rights and Development.
The Law on Promotion of Gender Equality, article 11, legal-
ized the prevention of sexual harassment in the workplace.
Since 2001, civil society organizations have built a network
against sexual harassment in the workplace. For the past 15 years
they have been combating sexual harassment in the workplace
through various actions such as public campaigns, case lobbying,
training and capacity-building journalists, developing manuals,
brochures and learning from the country’s experiences.
Women’s economic empowerment
Over the past decade, Mongolian economic development has
been based on the mining sector. In reality, there are still emerg-
ing issues among women due to negative economic influences.
Sustainable development and peace are only available when
equal participation of both men and women is supported in
social development and fulfilled throughout the economy,
politics, culture and freedom. Therefore, equal participa-
tion significantly influences the strengthening of women’s
economic empowerment, preventing gender-based violence,
increasing women’s participation in society, and reducing
both domestic and social pressure.
To improve women’s economic empowerment, it is
important for everyone to be employed equally, without
discrimination according to their age and gender, and for each
to be able to own land and property. Budget allocation should
be transparent to create opportunities for women to access
social profit and fulfil their economic rights. Hence, we need
to extend gender-sensitive budgeting.
Since the Beijing Platform in 1995, Mongolia has focused on
strengthening women’s economic empowerment and capac-
ity through its inclusion in policies and programmes. Lately,
the NCGE has been focusing on rural women’s development.
According to the implementation of Sustainable Development
Goal (SDG) 5, it is a requirement to consider building technical
skills to access technology for improving women’s economic
empowerment. Hence, the NCGE has developed a national
sub-programme on strengthening women’s economic empow-
erment based on joint project implementation with the Asia
Foundation since 2013. The national sub-programme covers
the goals of improving existing laws, changing social negative
stereotypes and the culture against women, providing required
skills for women to run small businesses as well as developing
a bank-friendly system, and improving women’s participation
at the decision-making level in the economic sector.
Image: NCGE
‘Strengthening women – strengthening democracy’ at the Women’s Forum of the Community of Democracies, Ulaanbaatar, April 2013
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