Mongolia

Mongolia is a country of rolling steppes and dusty deserts with harsh climate and the sparsest population density in the world with an average of two inhabitants per square kilometre. The most common source of income and livelihood is nomadic pastoral farming. Mongolia’s economy collapsed after the disintegration of the USSR. While Mongolia has recently experienced enormous economic growth due to its abundant natural resources in the past years, almost half of the rural Mongolians and more than a quarter of urban Mongolians live below the poverty line.

People in Need started to work in Mongolia towards the end of 2009, when the country was hit by a dzud, an extremely harsh winter. People in Need provided humanitarian assistance to families of herdsmen that helped them to recover their small agricultural businesses and to get better prepared for possible dzuds in the future.

In 2011, People in Need established a permanent mission in Mongolia and since then it has focused on sustainable development, vocational education and improvement of accessibility and quality of health services in remote rural areas as well as activities to support and strengthen Mongolian civil society.

Due to the challenges Mongolia has been facing in connection with the rapid expansion of mining, advancing desertification, deforestation, air pollution and overlap of interests of Mongolian political and economic elites, our activities will focus especially on environmental protection and sustainable management of natural resources.