By Achariya Kohtbantau

From afar, Mongolia and Laos may not have a lot in common. From an environmental point of view, however, both nations share the same concern: water is a precious resource that needs to be protected.

I learned first-hand of that shared concern when I traveled to Mongolia in September. I was there to learn from The Asia Foundation’s impressive Water Quality Monitoring (WQM) program in Mongolia and to find out if the program could be adapted and used in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, where I am based and where a water quality and environmental monitoring project on a much smaller scale was launched by the Foundation in 2008. Both Mongolia and Laos rely heavily on their water resources and share similar concerns about environmental degradation possibly caused by pressing needs for the countries’ economic development.
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By Hallie Schiffman-Shilo

Hallie Schiffman-Shilo is The Asia Foundation’s Program Assistant for the Women’s Empowerment Program based in Washington, D.C. She can be reached at hshilo@asiafound.org-dc.org.

Human trafficking is one of the most egregious human rights abuses. Each year, millions of men, women, and children are trafficked within their own countries or abroad into exploitative, abusive, and often illegal labor sectors. Many trafficking victims are forced into sexual slavery, domestic servitude, or hard labor and suffer from both physical and psychological abuse. Official statistics are hard to determine because of the illicit nature of trafficking. However, the International Labor Organization estimates that there are 12.3 million people in forced or bonded labor, forced child labor, or sexual servitude at any given time. Furthermore, an estimated 80 percent of transnational trafficking victims are women and girls.
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By Beverly Hoover

Beverly Hoover is Acting Country Representative for The Asia Foundation in Mongolia and can be reached at bhoover@asiafound.mn.

Pre-election polling indicated it would be a tight race between Mongolia’s two presidential candidates: the incumbent President N. Enkhbayar, representing the former Communists’ Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP), and the opposition candidate, Ts. Elbegdorj, representing the Democratic Party.  There was also speculation on how free and fair the elections would be: The Asia Foundation’s Voter Education Survey cited 46 percent of Ulaanbaatar residents believed some malfeasance would occur in the election. Furthermore, tension ran high in the run-up to the election over concern that there may be a repeat of the rioting and deadly violence that followed last year’s Parliamentary Election, in which the MPRP won the majority of the seats.

President N. Enkhbayar has had a long history of political power in Mongolia and was believed to have strong support from the countryside. His party also held the majority of seats in Parliament. It was rumored that he had been advised by high-level international campaign strategists, which included both Russians and former aides to President Bill Clinton.
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By Tugsjargal Anand

Tugsuu is The Asia Foundation’s Program Officer in Mongolia. She can be reached at tugsuu@asiafound.mn.

The story of Bat-Erdene, who lives in remote eastern Mongolia, chronicles the impact that the Books for Asia program has made here. Growing up in the late 1990’s, Bat-Erdene was thirsty for knowledge and information about the world around him. The books that were distributed through The Asia Foundation’s Books for Asia program were among the scarce English language resources he had access to through his school.  With the support of these resources, Bat-Erdene learned English, earned his graduate degree in Ulaanbaatar, and went on to become elected as a local governor. Today, he runs the branch office of a nation-wide youth initiative. 
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By Rebecca Darling

*The content of this blog article was updated on April 28, 2009

Rebecca Darling is The Asia Foundation’s Director of Natural Resources and Development/Securing our Future Program. She can be reached at rdarling@asiafound.mn.

A paradigm shift is underway in Mongolia. The integration of “responsible mining” and ecological protection in government policy papers, public speeches by elected officials, and platforms of political parties, reflects Mongolia’s growing environmental awareness and commitment to developing the minerals sector in ways that will protect natural resources and benefit all Mongolians. This is the result of significant advocacy efforts on behalf of a committed group of representatives from industry, government, and civil society.
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On December 4th, The Asia Foundation’s office in Mongolia released the sixth edition of the Corruption Benchmarking Survey, which covers the six months from March to September 2008. This survey provides time series data that identifies trends and patterns in citizen awareness, intolerance for corruption, and support for measures to combat corruption.

Over the six-month period, ministries and line agencies completed individual corruption assessments and action plans that were mandated by the Prime Minister’s decree earlier in the year. The Independent Authority Against Corruption (IAAC) received an increasing number of corruption complaints, although call volume to the Corruption Reporting Hotline decreased concomitant with the end of the IAAC’s public awareness and education campaign.
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By Rebecca Darling

The below was originally published in “Asia Miner” Magazine and was written by Rebecca Darling, the Director of Natural Resources and Development programs at The Asia Foundation in Mongolia. She can be reached at rdarling@asiafound.org.

In the northwest corner of central Mongolia’s Tov province, 80% of the land in Ugumuur town has been licensed to 18 Mongolian, Russian, and Chinese miners. Activity hums dusk to dawn.

Ugumuur is a boom-town but like many towns in Mongolia, it is deeply scarred by a legacy of poor mining practices in the 1990s. Citizens have been divorced from land-use decision-making, they observe environmental damage and often imported labor crowded them out of the local mining market. These are sore points with locals, who, according to one, say that they would support mining if “we are engaged and employed, and if companies reclaim land when extraction is completed.” These concerns are voiced by communities in Khentii, Hovsgol and other provinces across Mongolia.
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Participants at a forum held last week in Seoul want you to steal their ideas. Organized by The Asia Foundation, and supported by KDI School of Public Policy and Management and the Korea Business Council for Sustainable Development, the group gathered from countries across Asia to discuss how to address local and regional environmental threats while enhancing development and economic growth.

In the keynote address that opened the day-long event, Terry Foecke, managing partner of Materials Productivity LLC and senior environmental consultant at The Asia Foundation, set the tone for the day. “A sustainable project incorporates ideas that are packaged for theft,” he said. “These are concepts that are so good and so obvious that people will want to replicate them.”
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By William S.Infante

William Infante is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Mongolia.

In May of last year, Silvano Jino and Sarangerel Chuluunbaatar were convicted under Mongolia’s Criminal Code Article 113 for trafficking Mongolian women to Macau; they were sentenced to over 10 years in prison. This was the first trafficking in persons case that resulted in a conviction under Article 113 in nearly a decade, and it is an example of the Government’s commitment to pursue perpetrators aggressively.

Between the early 1990s and 2006, only half a dozen cases of trafficking were prosecuted and adjudicated by the Mongolian courts. Of these, only one resulted in a conviction under Article 113, which carries relatively stiff penalties. The other cases were presented under Article 124, Organized Prostitution, which carries relatively light sentences of between one and three years imprisonment.
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Doug Bereuter, President of The Asia Foundation, recently returned from Korea and Mongolia. In Mongolia, he met with President Enkhbayar, Democratic Party Leader Ts. Elbegdorj, and Civic Union/Green Party Leader Enkhbat, in addition to touring mine sites in Zamaar soum, Tov aimag. His interview with MM News Television can be viewed here. In Korea, Mr. Bereuter delivered the speech, “Challenges in U.S.-Asian Relations Awaiting a New American President” which can be read in its entirety here.