‘Progress on human rights defender’s Bill in Mongolia but defamation laws put media at risk’, June 17, 2020

After sustained pressure from civil society groups and months spent drafting a bill, on 11th May 2020, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Damdin Tsogtbaatar submitted the bill on human rights defenders to the speaker of parliament, Gombojav Zandanshatar. The draft ‘Law on the Legal Status of Human Rights Defenders’ provides them a legal status and was developed to ensure the security of human rights defenders and establish a system for seeking justice if their rights were violated.

...Human rights defenders in Mongolia are under attack on many levels and are often labelled by pro-government actors as “undesirables”, “troublemakers”, “foreign agents” or “opponents of the state”. The government has failed to provide human rights defenders with adequate protection from attacks and threats from private actors. Housing rights activists, journalists, environmental activists and online opinion leaders face harassment such as phone calls from unknown callers asking them to stop their activism. Environmental activists and journalists have reported that they face threats and intimidation from the police...

Michel Forst, the former UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, during his visit in mid-2019, received reports of cases in which environmentalists and journalists working on corruption faced threats and intimidation...