IMPLEMENTATION OF THE MONGOLIAN NATIONAL PROGRAMME OF ACTION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF WOMEN

Alternative Report by Mongolian Women’s NGOs

Ulaanbaatar April, 2000

Introduction to the Report

Following the Beijing Special Session of the United Nations for Women in 1995, the Mongolian National Government created the National Program of Action for
the Advancement of Women ("National Program for Women") in 1996. In 2000, in preparation for Beijing+5, another Special Session of the United Nations for
Women, in New York, the Mongolian Government produced a report on the implementation of this National Program for Women.

The National CEDAW Watch Network Center created this report. It is an independent review of the government’s implementation of its National Program for
Women. The National CEDAW Watch Network Center is an NGO that was established in 1998 to monitor and evaluate the government’s programs for women. It prepared this report without any government funding on the basis of information collected from the government and the non-governmental sectors. This report was prepared with the support of operational funding from the Asia Foundation and AusAID.

The report is on three parts of the National Program for Women: a) Women and Economic Development, g) Women in Power and Decision-Making, and h)
Violence against Women and Human Rights. The beginning of the report sets out the context of Mongolian women and the end of the report sets out a number of
recommendations for government.

One: Historical Developments and Women’s Status in Mongolia

Mongolia is located in Central Asia. Its territory supports a total population of about 2.4 million people, one fourth of which lives in the capital city, Ulaanbaatar.
Mongolia is administratively divided into 21 aimags (provinces) that are further divided into 343 sums (counties) and 1400 bags (administrative units smaller than
sums) whilst Ulaanbaatar consists of 9 districts that are further divided into 122 khoroos (sub-districts). Fifty five percent of the total population live in urban, settled
environments whilst the remaining forty five per cent live in rural areas. The population density is 15 persons per every 1000 hectares.

For Mongolian women who had been, for hundreds of years, excluded from public life due to the demands of the traditional lifestyle and the needs of household
production associated with the nomadic livestock breeding, the People’s Revolution of 1921 brought major changes. Women were presented with an opportunity to acquire formal education and participate in the political, social, and economic life of the country. ( UNIFEM Women in Mongolia 1998 )

In the years following the People’s Revolution, women received, just as men did, primary, secondary, complete, and higher education and were employed, equally
with men, in all sectors of the society. However, due to social norms and cultural traditions, the decision- and policy-making positions remained under male
domination.

The policies on women implemented by the ruling Party and Government leadership of that period focused on the social welfare provisions for women, women’s
health and living conditions. In the 1960s and 1970s some progressive measures were taken such as creating jobs for women, developing a list of positions that
could be occupied by women, establishing professional re-training courses, and providing pensions and benefits on alleviated conditions. Though on one hand, the
above measures helped women to gain a meaningful position in the society, on the other hand they treated women not as active contributors to the national
development but as inactive recipients of the benefits of development. It should be stated that this attitude has continued into the present.

The 1990 Democratic Revolution has fundamentally changed Mongolia’s social and economic life. Mongolian women have actively participated in effecting those
changes demonstrating that they are indeed active members of the Mongolian society. Since 1992, women have started to organize themselves to fight for their
social, economic, and political rights and currently there are over forty non-governmental organizations registered with the Ministry of Justice. These NGOs direct
their activities to improving women’s political, social, and economic status and enabling women to enjoy their legally guaranteed rights.

Even though the Constitution of Mongolia and all pursuant laws state that men and women of Mongolia have equal rights, in reality that equality is far from being
implemented. Women’s political, social and economic participation is much lower than men’s in that women constitute only 10.5 per cent of current parliament
members, 11 per cent of government (cabinet) members, 0 per cent of aimag and capital city governors, 2.4 per cent of sum and district governors, 6-13 per cent of citizens, representatives, khurals (local legislatures) at all levels, 0 per cent of the heads of the citizens, representatives, khurals and 3-8 per cent of presidium
members. In the judicial branch, even though women constitute about 70% of all legal professionals, only 23.5 per cent of the Supreme Court members are women.
( Women and Men in Mongolia , NSO, 1998 )

During the transition to an open-market economy, the impacts of privatization and structural adjustment hit hardest the light manufacturing, services, and trading
sectors that employed large numbers of women. As a result, many women who lost their jobs shifted into the informal economy and often lapsed into poverty and
unemployment for the lack of guaranteed steady income, decent wages and jobs. At the same time, many thousands of women aged between 38 and 55 with four or more children were forced into retirement, which made it difficult for these women to maintain equitable living standards for their families and put them under multiple psychological and financial pressures. In addition, many of these women have lost their subsidy/pension entitlements under the revised laws and only receive a compensation payment of 6,000 to 13,000 MNT ($6-$13 USD) per month, which has become an important reasons for their impoverishment. (Imlementation
employment rights of women in Mongolia, NCEDAWWNC, 1999 )

The government has not taken any measures to create new jobs, provide professional and administrative assistance, and supply loans, run formal or informal training
and retraining courses for the women who had lost their employment.

As women have been hit hardest by the economic and social crisis, the majority of the unemployed is women. Before the 1990s, many thousands of women
professionals had worked in the animal husbandry and crop growing sectors but with the decentralization and privatization of the agricultural sector over 20,000
women professionals that were trained in the preceding 30 years became unemployed.

Herders in the rural areas did benefit from the privatization of livestock and became able to supply themselves with food and other necessities. At the same time,
however, the workload of women herders has substantially grown as now not only do they have to care for their children and maintain their households but also
spend considerable amounts of time producing dairy products and other products of animal origin. In addition, the laws on standard working hours, vacation days,
and level of wages are not applied to herdswomen; the contribution herdswomen make to the national development has not been assessed and there is no state
institution that is concerned with these issues.

Mongolian women study equally with men and sometimes outnumber men in agricultural and other scientific fields and acquire different types of profession. In 1998,
students enrolled in higher educational institutions numbered 50.2 thousand accounting for 10.1% of all 502.3 thousand students at all levels of education. Women
constituted 62% of all MA and post-MA students, 68.1% of all BA students, 84% of all students enrolled in higher education diploma institutes, and 52-54% of
students in secondary schools and professional training schools.( Women and Men in Mongolia, NSO, 1998)

However, this incredible pool of educated women’s professional and intellectual capacity remains highly underutilized for the national development.

Two: The National Machinery for Addressing Women’s Issues and Other Organizational Issues

A. The Structure and Organization of the National Machinery

Prior to 1990, there was only one quasi-governmental mass organization concerned with women’s issues. However, following the democratic revolution, the national mechanism for addressing women’s issues has changed fundamentally. The current mechanism is structured as follows: ( Implementation of NPAW , Ministry of Health and social welfare Mongolia, 1999)

The Legislative Body is responsible for reflecting women’s issues in the new laws; developing, discussing, and ratifying such laws; analyzing the existing legislation
and monitoring their implementation. However, as neither the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Social Policy nor the Parliamentary Caucus of Women has been
doing any concrete and effective work, even the Parliament composed in 1996 has been producing laws that discriminate against women and limit women’s
economic and political rights.

The Executive Body is responsible for formulating and implementing State Policies on Women. More narrowly, it is the Minister of Health and Social Security,
Member of the Government that is in charge of Women’s Issues. Though in 1996, a policy-developing unit on Youth, Family, and Women was established within the ministry, it was pulled down in 1999 and the responsibilities were transferred onto one person in the Human Development unit of the Strategic Management and
Planning Department of the ministry. We believe this is a step back from the previous arrangement.

At the local administration level, the Social Policy Departments of the City, Aimag and District Governor’s Offices each have an officer in charge of youth, family,
and women’s issues. At the primary administrative levels in sums and khoroos, there are staff members as well responsible for children’s, youth, family, and women’s issues.

The National Council on Women’s Issues was established, according to a government resolution, in 1996 under the aegis of the Minister for Heath and Social
Welfare to monitor, analyze, support and promote the implementation of the Mongolian state policies on women, the international conventions that Mongolia is
signatory to, and the National Program of Action on Improving Women’s Status. The Council membership consists of several Members of the Parliament, Ministry
Officials, and representatives of several Women’s NGOs. However, as the Council does not have a budget and hasn’t been able to sort itself out organizationally, it
has not been able to do any substantial work beyond holding several meetings and developing a few project proposals.

Women’s NGOs: currently, there are nearly forty women’s NGOs in Mongolia. Though these organizations differ by their objectives, constituencies, and nature of
their activities, they have a few things in common – organizing women and recruiting their potential for the national development, work together on particular issues,
and influence the government performance in relevant areas.

The Women’s NGOs For a held in 1996 and 1998 discussed the ways of increasing the state and NGO participation in and support for the implementation of the
National Program of Action on Improving Women’s Status and developed concrete proposals aimed at intensifying the implementation of the program and modifying the structure of the national machinery on women’s issues. However, the state has not undertaken any effective measures to support the activities of women’s NGOs or cooperate with the latter.

B. Financial Issues

According to a government resolution, the financial resources required for the implementation of the Program of Action are to be mobilized through annual allocations from the central and local budgets, supplemented by contractual cooperation with NGOs and foreign assistance.

In 1997 and 1999, owing to financial hardships, no allotments were made from the state budget. In 1998, 30 million tugriks of the total budget approved for the
Ministry of Health and Social Policy were earmarked for the implementation of the Program of Action. However, only 1.2 million were actually spent for the
Program. As for the year 2000, 10 million were committed for the Program but so far no actual financing has been made.

Many donor organizations such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, United Nations Development Program, TACIS, World Health Organization, United
Nations Population Fund, UNIFEM, UNESCO, Save the Children Funds of Norway and Britain, and the Japanese Government have been providing financial
support for the achieving the goals stated in the National Program of Action. Within the framework of the National Poverty Alleviation Program, 6 million USD have been spent since 1995 for income-generation projects in manufacturing and services sectors and for programs directed at improving the access to health and
education services for vulnerable groups. TACIS has donated 2.3 million USD since 1995 to create jobs for vulnerable groups in the manufacturing and services
sectors. There is, however, no adequate monitoring of the use of donor funds and the implementation of programs funded by foreign donors and there is no reporting to the public on the quality and effectiveness of these programs.

Three: Women and Economic Development

Strategic Objectives of the National Program of Action:

Further develop the legal environment for ensuring women’s right to employment and other economic rights; and

Create favorable conditions for improving female employment, and reduce the unemployment down to 5.8% of economically active women by the
year 2000.

Legally, Mongolian women have an equal right to the benefits of their labor and other economic resources. Their right to equal access to inheritance and ownership
of land, livestock and other property are codified in the Constitution, the Civil Code, the Family Law and the Criminal Code of Mongolia.

The newly passed laws and resolutions contain concrete provisions on ensuring women’s right to work, improving women’s working conditions and safety
standards. The Labor Law newly ratified by the Parliament and enforced since July 1, 1999, contains a section on Women’s Labor where it states about women’s
employment rights in 8 articles and 14 provisions.

What’s interesting about the new Labor Law is that it broadens the scope of cases that can be resolved by the negotiations among the parties involved allowing for
the parties to freely enter into labor agreement on issues not stipulated by the Law based on their negotiations. The Law also prohibited employers from asking
personal questions and putting various limitations not pertinent to the job they are offering and discriminating based on criteria irrelevant to employment requirements.
Moreover, the Law pays special attention to the responsibility of the employer to maintain adequate working conditions, sets state standards for safety and hygiene
at work places, and stipulates, in order to ensure the mechanism for enforcing these standards, administrative penalties for the violation of safety and hygiene
standards.

Nevertheless, the implementation of the Labor Law is far from satisfactory and there are many cases of breaching the Law as the mechanism for enforcing it has not
been established and the government has still not passed the Regulations on the Implementation of the Labor Law. In particular, many manufacturing companies with full or partial foreign investment repeatedly and blatantly violate the Labor Law provisions and force their employees to work 10-12 hours a day in poor safety and hygiene condition often utilizing hazardous materials for the production of their goods. Despite knowing this situation, the state has not taken any drastic measures and has limited its activities by merely checking the working conditions and imposing small fines on the employers.

Furthermore, women are openly discriminated against in job ads publicized in print media that stipulate the requirements job applicants must fulfill often disqualifying
female applicants over 35 years of age and based on other physical characteristics such as the looks, height, etc.

In 1997, the Labor and Social Security Department of the Ministry of Health and Social Security conducted a countrywide inspection to determine the national level
of labor safety and protection. The inspection covered 4,953 economic entities of all sectors and types of ownership and 191,798 employees of those entities, 49%
of whom were women.

The provision of gender-disaggregated data remains inadequate. The research and surveys conducted by the National Statistical Office are generally not
gender-sensitive and the NSO does not produce much gender-desegregated statistics except some limited data in very few issue areas such as health and education.
As a state agency, the NSO is well equipped in terms of personnel and technical capacity but lacks any staff members capable of producing gender-sensitive
research. Hence, they continue to produce statistics in an old-fashioned manner providing some generalized indicators on population and family and not enough (if
any) gender-desegregated data on political participation and representation, management, use and ownership of property, crime, and violence.

In 1999, the NSO organized, in cooperation with UNDP, a national seminar on "Policy, Planning and Gender Information" to discuss the collection and
dissemination of information necessary for developing and implementing gender-sensitive policies. Though the seminar was an important event, the resolutions passed thereof remain on paper and there is not adequate work done to develop gender-desegregated data, especially on the wage and labor status disparities between men and women, percentages of female workers, age, sex, and number of family members, main sources of family income, etc.

An important issue with regard to female employment is work in the informal sector. According to our estimates, 50% of those working in the informal sector are
women and the majority of these people work on the basis of temporary labor agreements. As in such conditions according to the Labor Law the employers are not required to take responsibility for social and health insurance payments of their workers, temporary labor agreements become a source of violation of these
workers’, particularly, women’s social and economic rights such as access to social security.

By the statistics of the first three months of the year 2000, women account for 49.8% of all people of labor age and 47% of economically active people At the same
time, women constitute 53.9% of the unemployed. At the beginning of 2000, the unemployment rate was 6.4%, which means that the government has not met its
target to reduce unemployment to 5.8% by the year 2000. .( Mongolian social and economic condition, Daily News ,20.01.2000, N-12)

64.8 % of all unemployed people are under 35 years of age and 52.0 % of them are women. By the figures of 1999, 64.6% of all unemployed did not have
professional training, which is an increase by 5.8 from the previous year testifying to the increasing demand for professional skills on the job market as well as to the
increasing number of unskilled people. (Employment , Mongolia, NCO, 1999) Though women have a far higher rate of tertiary education than men do, the labor
market is requiring qualitatively and quantitatively different skills. In order to help women to fit these requirements and acquire new jobs, the state should provide
professional training and retraining courses on a large scale but it is yet unclear how the state is planning to fulfill this duty.

The availability of adequate child-care facilities is an important factor that influences female employment. However, since 1992, the number of childcare facilities has
declined from 441 till 38, which together with the provision of the Family Law that has forced many women to take 2-3 year-long childcare leaves had an effect of
distancing women from the social life, limiting their social and economic rights, and pushing many women into poverty.

The provisions in the newly ratified Family Law and Law on Social Welfare that grant the right to childcare leaves only to women or single fathers limit and violate
equality of genders within and outside families and allow employers to forcibly give their women employees 2-3 year-long childcare leaves. Also as there is no
mechanism of encouraging employers that provide childcare facilities for their employees, employers are not only interested in creating these facilities but are also
reluctant to hire people with small children.

Four: Women’s Participation in Power and Decision Making

Strategic Objectives of the National Program of Action:

Promote women’s participation in decision-making and ensure, by the year 2000, an increase to at least 20% in the representation of women in
national and local top decision-making positions, both elected and appointed.

Mongolian women were first granted the right to participate in the elections as voters and candidates by the 1924 Constitution of Mongolia. The current Constitution states that all citizens of Mongolia residing in Mongolia have equal rights regardless of their ethnicity, language, age, sex, social status and background, wealth, employment, religion, opinion, and education.

In the 70 years of one-party dictatorship and socialist regime, many women were elected as deputies at different levels of legislative councils based on the principle
that there should be an adequate representation of women in top leadership positions. For example, in 1931, almost 600 women were elected in local administration elections accounting for 30% of all the elected. In 1940, there were 14 women elected on the State Small Khural.

With the democratic revolution that started in 1989 and the rise of people’s political consciousness and participation, many women voluntarily joined various political parties, movements, and NGOs exercising their political rights to protect their interests. This situation found its reflection in the new Constitution of Mongolia ratified in 1992.

However, there still are many cases when laws are violated and the inequality of men and women remains to be a reality. This is particularly visible in the fact that
women’s participation in decision-making at top levels is highly inadequate.

Mongolia has had two parliamentary (State Great Khural) elections since the first free election of the 1990 that created the People’s Great Khural and the State
Small Khural. Prior to the 1996 parliamentary elections, several women’s NGOs held a "Women in Politics" Forum that led to the establishment of the Women’s
Coalition. The coalition recommended political parties and the current legislature and the government that a quota for women candidates be set for the parliamentary
elections but the proposal was not supported by the policy-makers. Mongolia has a majoritarian electoral system, which makes it harder to increase women’s
political representation. Unfortunately, neither the state nor the non-state organizations have paid much attention to adopting an electoral system that would be more
favorable to women’s representation. The 1996 local government elections were conducted based on a mixed majoritarian and proportional system. However, as
women’s names were listed last on the party lists, only 6-13% of the current Citizen Representative Khurals (local legislatures) are a woman.

There are currently 21 political parties in Mongolia and four of them have seats in the parliament. An important progress in the political life of Mongolia is the fact that over the last few years these parties that had been concentrated in the capital city only have reached out into rural areas establishing local branches and intensifying party work in the countryside. The parties have not, however, done any work at any level towards promoting women politicians and increasing women’s political participation in the formal politics. Only the MNDP (Mongolian National Democratic Party) has taken some steps in this direction and, as a result, the first woman minister was appointed and the senior advisor to the Prime Minister is also a woman. Though the party set a policy that no less than 20% of party personnel at all levels of the party structure should be women, the personnel policy has not been consistent and no clear steps have been taken to recruit, support and promote female party members. ( Selected research on staff in Power and Decision-making, LEOS, 1998 )

The state has not implemented a strategic program for improving the gender balance with regard to manpower and personnel policies. Women are predominantly
found in mid-level management positions in such fields as health, education, social security, and culture. Even when they hold higher-level positions they are usually
subordinate ones such as the post of a deputy director.

The strategic objective of the National Platform of Action on increasing women’s political representation is not being met, nor is has the government been monitoring education and training programs to ensure adequate education of women. Hence, there is no sound statistics about the percentage of women students at different levels of education and training programs. There are concrete to the creation of a favorable political, economic, and social environment for the improvement of women’s political and social participation. These include:

Social and cultural norms play an important part. There are many politicians that believe that women are in general incapable of meaningfully participating in
politics. There are also many traditional sayings such as "Women have long hair but short brain" and various customs that limit women’s social rights. Thus,
according to our tradition, it is the man that is considered as the head of the household and this has been reasserted in the current laws.

Women shoulder the reproductive functions such as doing housework, and caring for the children. As a result, they lack time to educate themselves,
participate in public affairs, and other decision-making activities and drop behind professionally and socially. This situation undermines women’s
self-confidence, their commitment to any kind of work, and think themselves unfit for many jobs including the politics, which they often believe to be a male
arena.

The government has not designed any programs to seek out, educate, and promote talented young women leaders or potential leaders. Hence, there has been
no substantial progress in promoting female leadership.

The political parties’ support for women candidates is extremely weak. It is common that women candidates would have financial hardships in running their
election campaigns and that male candidate would pick the most promising electoral districts.

In the absence of government action, women’s NGOs have run some activities aimed at promoting women to decision-making positions and increasing women’s
political education and have reached some results. In anticipation of the next parliamentary elections, the women’s NGO’s have formed a coalition in order to
support women candidates and improve women’s voters’ consciousness. The coalition currently unites some 30 NGOs and is an improvement in many ways from
the first women’s coalition as it was able to learn from previous mistakes. The coalition is now a permanent NGO running regular activities and registered with the
Ministry of Justice. It is non-governmental, non-profit, non-partisan and independent.

Since its establishment, the coalition has held meetings with the leadership of parliamentary parties, presented its activities to them, exchanged opinions on improving
women’s political representation, and discussed possibilities of working together with the parties on organizing free discussions on gender and gender-sensitivity
training seminars for party members. Also, the coalition has been running other activities such as public education projects via print and broadcast media directed to
increasing gender awareness of the voters and supporting women candidates.

The Liberal Women’s Brain Pool has been running, since its inception, nation-wide informal training projects to increase women’s political participation and is
currently implementing a program entitled "Woman Candidate." Within the framework of this program, LEOS is conducting training seminars in rural areas through its local branches to support women candidates for local elections and improve voter education of rural residents. Also, the Young Women Leaders’ Club of LEOS
works towards training and preparing future women leaders.

Five: Violence Against Women and Human Rights

Strategic Objectives of the National Program of Action:

Strengthen the legal framework for protecting the human rights of women and to fight against violence; and

Develop services to prevent violence against women and to protect women victims of violence.

One of the basic principles of the Mongolian State is to ensure equal rights of men and women in the sphere of economic, socio-political, family, cultural, and legal
relations. There are newly amended provisions on protecting women’s human rights, developing a legal framework for combating violence, and protecting mothers’
interests in the laws on health, social security, labor, family, social welfare, etc.

However, during this period of transition to a market economy, women have been experiencing many cases of discrimination and violence, limitations of their rights
and freedoms and there is an increasing negative tendency that demands public attention. In families, at work, and public places women are subjected to violence
and domination, physical, psychological, and sexual.

As legislators do not have a comprehensive approach to the protection of women’s human rights, the newly passed laws are often one-sided, protective rather than
supportive, and even limiting of women’s rights and freedoms.

One of the main reasons why overt and covert violence against women has become so widespread is the fact that no legal or moral environment has developed that
would resist violence. Some laws aimed at combating violence are not being implemented, often there is internal contradiction in those laws, and even more seriously, there is little desire or knowledge among lawmakers to develop laws that would protect women from discrimination and violence. For example, though it seems that the laws contain adequate sanctions for men who committed violence against women, these provisions cannot effectively resolve domestic violence cases. The newly passed Family Law mentions does not go much further than mentioning violence and the the Criminal Code only has some general provisions on beating, offending, insulting, intimidating, and causing suicides that do not help much in domestic violence cases. As long as there is no serious injury or no life is lost, domestic violence is regarded as a private issue and no legal case is opened. No action is taken to prevent repetitions of domestic violence or protect the victims, which shows that the state has not been living up to its promise to reduce domestic violence.

The Criminal Code was recently amended to provide compensation to victims not only for physical and material losses but also for psychological injuries and
damage to one’s reputation. However, the courts still mainly mandate compensation for physical and material losses only and so far there are no regulations on
assessing the extent of psychological damage and corresponding compensation. It is rare that victims would file for compensation for psychological damage. Clearly, such legal arrangements do not help combat violence.

Though the government has advantage over other institutions in terms of personnel and technical capacity, it still has not undertaken any studies or analyses of
violence against women, which also shows that the government is not working towards the objectives stated in the Program of Action.

In 1997, the government developed a country report on the implementation of the CEDAW in Mongolia and submitted it to the UN though it has never reported on
the implementation of the convention to the public, nor has it publicized the objectives of the convention among the people of Mongolia.

Though the Criminal Code, the Law on Administrative Responsibilities, and the Law against Pornography all ban the advertisement of pornographic and violent
material, our print media widely publicize under the pretext of the freedom of press advertisements that explicitly discriminate against women based on their age and
outward appearance, use objectified sexual images of women for the purposes of advertisement and further reinforce gender inequity and gender stereotyping. Some examples of such ads include:

Hiring young pretty girls aged between 20 and 23 with high communication skills as saleswomen. Telephone No… (Daily News, No. 126, 1999);

Regularly buying for high prices photos of famous women for the "Erotic Corner’ section of the newspaper (Private Life, No. 4, 1998);

Beautiful woman and good windows are decorations for a man and a house (Promotion brochure of the Monpol construction company, 2000).

The above examples testify that there is no adequate legal environment for holding these media organizations responsible for discriminatory publications.

In general, the government actions to reduce violence against women remain highly unsatisfactory for the current level of violence against women. Therefore,
women’s NGOs have taken the initiative to run activities pulling their resources, some of which are rendering some results.

It is women’s NGOs that have shouldered nation-wide gender-sensitivity and gender-awareness training programs making an important contribution to improving
public education on gender issues.

The CEDAW Watch Network Center that unites 15 women’s NGOs monitors the status of women’s rights and the implementation of the laws on women’s rights,
and provides analysis and recommendations. To promote the implementation of the CEDAW and to garner public support for and understanding of CEDAW, the
center has organized in the last two years a series of intensive training of trainers programs entitled "The Status of Women’s Human Rights in Mongolia" for urban
and rural NGO activists and top level civil servants. As a result of these seminars that covered in total over 300 trainees, there is now a National Trainers’ Team
consisting of 12 members and about 200 rural trainers. Also, the Center has, in cooperation with the regional network of Asia-Pacific countries on monitoring
women’s rights, developed the base report on "Women’s Employment Rights" following the Article 11 of the CEDAW, translated the report and is currently
distributing it to national and international organizations.

The Women Lawyer’s Association has been conducting women's rights training seminars at national and local levels to improve lawyers’ knowledge of women’s
rights issues. The Association has also been providing pro bono constancy to women whose rights have been infringed. Moreover, the WLA has effectively
undertaken, upon their own initiative and foreign donor funding, a number of important studies on burning issues faced by women.

The National Center Against Violence conducted surveys of 4,100 people in 1996 and 5,000 people in 1998. Though these studies did not succeed at revealing the root causes of domestic violence, they did draw much public attention to the issue of domestic violence. The surveys showed that 1 in 3 women regularly suffer from some kind of violence, and 1 in 10 women regularly suffer physical abuse. The Center has worked intensively in the last 3 years and has become an institution where women victims of domestic violence frequently come for advice and assistance. It runs a temporary shelter house for women and their children under critical
psychological pressure and whose lives are possibly in danger. In the last 3 years, 342 women with 1-5 children each have spent 3060 bed days (children have
spent 3672 bed days) in the shelter house. Moreover, the training programs the Center has been running for policemen and violent men are delivering some results.

The WLA and the NCAV have been developing a draft law on domestic violence and are preparing to present the law to the parliament. Important provisions of this draft include articles on protecting victims and forcing violent men to go mandatory rehabilitation training programs.

The Gender Center for Sustainable Development, the NCAV and the WLA have been working together with the police, courts, and law enforcement institutions on
providing healthcare, psychological and legal counseling, and moral support for women victims of violence.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The government’s implementation of the National Program of Action has been insufficient. No real and effective measures have been taken to reach the primary
objectives of the National Program of Action. Therefore, there is a need to take the following recommendations into careful consideration:

To the State Great Khural:

Make an effort to create a legal framework for combating all forms of discrimination against women in political, economic, social, and family spheres and
amend the provisions in the Labor Law, Family Law, Law on Pensions, and Law Against Pornography that overtly and covertly discriminate against women.

Urgently develop with the assistance of and in cooperation with women’s NGOs and pass within the next three such laws against violence, discrimination, and
sexual harassment that are necessary for stopping the violation of women’s rights.

Nullify orders and resolutions that violate the principles stated in the Constitution of Mongolia and the international conventions that Mongolia is signatory to.

Amend the electoral laws as to make them more conducive to the increase of women’s political representation and the promotion of women to
decision-making levels.

To the Executive Government:

Improve the implementation of the National Program of Action on Improving Women’s Situation; improve the structure and organization of the central and
local governments and administrations that are in charge of the task; pay attention to developing and implementing gender-sensitive programs in partnerships
with foreign donor organizations as a way of solving the financial problems.

Create a mechanism of encouraging investment into private economic entities in the rural areas.

Research the implementation of the laws that discriminate against women such as the Labor Law, develop and propose amendments to the parliament.

Examine how companies with partial or full foreign investment are complying with national and international laws and take measures from fining to closing
down those that violate those laws.

Assess the participation of men and women in reproductive and productive spheres and evaluate their contributions to the development of the society and
family.

Take consistent measures to provide favorable conditions for women entrepreneurs and family businesses through adequate training, taxation, and financial aid
policies.

Support the participation of businesswomen in national and international business and trade events, promote exchange of experience and expertise among
businesswomen, and establish information centers in rural and urban areas to provide businesswomen with up-to-date market and business information.

As stated in the national Program of Action, develop and implement a "Women in Leadership" program in cooperation with NGOs in order to ensure a broad
participation of women at various levels of decision-making.

Set up courts specialized in domestic violence and other family disputes, train defense attorneys specialized in the same area, and found legal counseling offices
using local personnel resources.

To train policemen specialized in domestic violence issues and broaden the functions of the current units in charge of children to comprise family issues.

Develop formal and informal training courses to educate people on violence, prevent violence and teach self-defense methods.

Widen the services for women victims of domestic violence.

To Law-Enforcement Institutions:

Organize training at various levels on gender equality in rural areas and involve NGOs, scholars and researchers specializing in this area.

Using the resources of the Lawyers’ Retraining Center, promote research of international documents on women’s rights and gender equality.

Train defense attorneys, judges, and prosecutors specialized in gender issues.

To Political Parties:

Promote female party cadres, train them as potential candidates involving them in leaderships training and seminars on economic and political issues in order to
increase women’s political participation and representation.

Improve the gender-sensitivity of party platforms, pay attention to the advancement of women’s social status, the full use of women’s potential for the national
development and adequate assessment of women’s contribution to the national development.

To Economic Entities:

Adequately evaluate women’s labor and ensure safe working conditions for women.

Pay for overtime work as stipulated by the law.

Abandon hiring practices that discriminate women based on age an outward appearance.

Treat equally male and female employees with young children.

To the Public:

Familiarize with laws regarding women’s and human rights and gender equality.

Learn to express your views when your rights and freedoms have been violated, request assistance from law-enforcement institutions and other governmental
and non-governmental organizations, and publicize truthfully via mass media.

Familiarize with the National Program of Action on Improving Women’s Situation, contribute opinions to the improvement of the program and participate in its
implementation.

List of Materials Consulted:

Laws:

1.Mongolian Constitutional law

2.Mongolian Family Law

3.Mongolian Labor Code

4.Mongolian Criminal Code

5.Mongolian Pension Law

6.Mongolian Social Security Law

7.Mongolian Administrative Responsibility Law

8.Mongolian Law against Prostitution

9.Mongolian Media Law

10.Mongolian Social Insurance Law

Research materials:

1.National Statistics Office, Statistics Brochure, 1998, 1999

2.Women’s Information and Research Center, Questionnaire covering 3100 people of 5 regions, 1997

3.Liberal Women’s Brain Pool, Census on Women’s Participation in Politics, 1998

4.National Center Against Violence, Census, 1998

Other materials:

1.National Programme of Action the Advancement of Women, 1996

2.United Nations, "Human development" Brochure. 1997

3.National Statistics Office, Employment Report. 1999

4."Gender Policies and Statistics Analysis" Conference material organized by the UNO and the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. 1999

5.Women’s Information and Research Center, "Mongolian Women’s Economic Situation during the Transition Period", Research Advice. 1998

6.Women’s Information and Research Center, "Information on Gender", 1998.

7.Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. Information on the "National Program Implementation and Goals for Improving Women’s Status. 1999

8.Report on the Implementation of the National Poverty Alleviation Program. 1999

9.Report on the "Local Programs for the Advancing of Women’s Status" 1998, 1999.

People Consulted in Preparing this Report:

1. J. Zanaa - Director of the National CEDAW Watch Network Center

2. B. Uranchimeg - Executive Director of the Liberal Women’s Brain Pool

3. J. Altantsetseg - Governor of the National Center against Violence

4. N. Gerelsuren - President of Women’s Federation

5. M. Amaraa - Executive Director of the Women’s Coalition

6. E. Ganbileg - Officer at the National CEDAW Watch Network Center

7. Sarah Boddington - Australian Volunteer Lawyer

Report developed by: S. Davaasuren National - CEDAW Watch Network Center

Edited by: J. Zanaa - Director of the National CEDAW Watch Network Center

Translated by:

Edited by: Sarah Boddington - Australian Volunteer Lawyer

2 May, 2000 Ulaanbaatar Mongolia