Press Release 

Women’s Leadership in Local Governance" training was successfully organized for women councilors of Ulaanbaatar city on October 10-11th, 2018. 

Within the framework of project "Strengthening Representative Body of Mongolia", the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) with the support from Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and Parliament of Mongolia has trained 2,000 women councilors across the country through a series of "Women’s Leadership in Local Governance", a training which focused on empowering the councilors with necessary skills to build inclusive governance. 

This time the training was conducted for the Citizen's Representative Councilors of Capital City and Districts. About 100 women councilors attended the training this time which included sessions to map a social structure, discuss who they truly represent, use collective leadership for decision making, exercises to increase their sphere of influence and organize public hearings.

Chairman of Ulaanbaatar City Council Amarsaikhan S who delivered the opening remark, said, "Over 2,100 women councilors serve across the country as elected representatives of the people. With their presence, human development issues advance at a further rate, I can say. Women can lead in all fields and it is our collective duty to support them in doing so."

Director of Cooperation at Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Gabriella Spirli highlighted that, "We train women councilors to be more competent and empowered so that they can enter politics for a fairer decision-making making process. Together with UNDP and MONFEMNET, we have trained 2000 women councilors across Mongolia.”

Coordinator of MONFEMNET National Network, and National gender expert , Enkhjargal. D.,who facilitated the training stated that, "Women will not be able to reach top decision-making levels individually we need collective effort and support. Election law doesn't offer gender quota at local levels making it tougher for women to win. As the challenge involves centuries-old stigma and barriers women need to be collectively empowered and skilled more than ever.

In 2016, almost 2164-woman representatives were elected from the local election, of whom 59.8% was representatives who were elected for the first time.