Child rights governance program
The Child Rights Governance Program assesses the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, increases children’s participation in matters that affect them, and makes sure that children’s voices are heard by the community, the media, and decision-makers.
The program continually monitors the situation of children’s rights in Mongolia and has successfully facilitated projects such as Children’s Participation: Essential for Good Governance, Positive Participation by Youth, and Young Voices Surveys, 1, 2 and 3.
We also support Mongolian children to speak out about child-related issues: on violence, neglect, discrimination, corruption, conflicts of interest, and poverty, and to develop channels to make their voices heard by decision-makers.
We led a partnership of civil society networks to prepare the NGO Supplementary Reports to the UN Committee on the Rights of Child on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and presented and discussed the findings of the reports with the Committee in Geneva.
To help increase investment in children, we created the illustrated handbook Budget Analysis for Children in 2014. The handbook introduces a basic understanding of state and local budgets in Mongolia, budget information channels, how budgets are formed and distributed, as well as simple methods for children to analyze budgets.
We implemented Phase II of the civil society sub-projects of the Mainstreaming Social Accountability in Mongolia project undertaken by the World Bank and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation in 14 locations across the country. Save the Children provided consultancy service for implementation of the project in Umnugovi, Dungovi, Dornogovi, Govisumber, Khentii, Sukhbaatar, Dornod aimags and Bayangol, Chingeltei and Sukhbaatar districts of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia in 2021-2022. The project aimed to improve quality and accessibility of public services, particularly in primary health care, the efficiency of public investment and to strengthen the local capacity in order to mainstream social accountability.
Funded by the United Nations Fund for Democracy, Youth for Democracy in Mongolia project was implemented in Ulaanbaatar city districts and Khovd aimag in 2020-2022. The project was designed to empower young people to participate in decision-making processes through raising their awareness of democratic values, citizen participation, and electoral processes. The project has reviewed the current curriculum for Civic Education to identify gaps in content and methodology and developed extracurricular activities for target youth. The project established ten Young Voters Clubs in Ulaanbaatar and Khovd province, with over 250 members, who, in turn, engaged 5,823 youth to promote democratic values and participation in the election process.