ICNRD 5 Mongolia

The UNDP project “Follow-up to the Fifth ICNRD” supports the Government of Mongolia in organizing the follow-up activities of Fifth International Conference of New or Restored Democracies (ICNRD) held in Ulaanbaatar on 8-12 September 2003 as a forum to share knowledge and experiences in promoting pluralistic democracy and in particular its participatory aspect as the theme of the Conference Democracy, Good Governance and Civil Society specified.

The project will contribute to the implementation of the UN General Assembly Resolution 58/13 which commended the ICNRD5, encouraged Member States, the relevant organizations of the United Nations system, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations to contribute actively to the follow-up to the ICNRD5, and requested the Secretary-General to examine options to support the President of the ICNRD5 in his efforts toward making the Conference and its follow-up more effective and efficient.

The project will assist the Government to implement the recommendations of the Fifth ICNRD in Mongolia and facilitate Mongolia’s leadership in ensuring an effective follow-up to the Fifth ICNRD at international level as part of the preparations towards the Sixth ICNRD slated for 2006 in Doha, Qatar.

This project will support the formulation of a national plan of action, development of nationally-owned democratic governance indicators in Mongolia and the preparation of the Country Information Note for Mongolia in conjunction with UNDP’s and other donors’ country-level programmes, and thus will facilitate the design and piloting of methodologies which other new or restored democracies can use for the preparation of their national action plans, country information notes and democracy indicators’ databases as agreed under the Fifth ICNRD Plan of Action. This important aspect of the follow-up activities may build upon the work of the UNDP Oslo Governance Centre on democratic governance indicators and also other bilateral and multilateral governance programmes as well as the Inter-Parliamentary Union based in Geneva. The IPU is already working on revising its study on Free and Fair elections which is part of efforts to establish norms by which elections, a key component of any democratic dispensation, can be assessed.

The unprecedented involvement of the parliamentarians and especially the civil society in the Fifth ICNRD serves as the main guarantee of an effective follow-up and should continue throughout the period remaining till the Sixth ICNRD. This will also meet the expectations of the participants of the Fifth ICNRD who highly commended what they called a three-tier structure of ICNRD that came into being through the commitment and effort of the host, the Government of Mongolia. The project will facilitate close interaction between the governmental, parliamentarian and civil society fora of the ICNRD as transpired from the Ulaanbaatar Conference, and their respective mechanisms in implementing the outcome documents of these fora. This nexus will serve to underline the importance of the concept and practice of democratic values of representation and participation in the ICNRD process.

In this context the project will focus on promoting commitment at the highest political level for concerted and coordinated action involving all stakeholders in Mongolia.

Apart from supporting country-level activities, the project will facilitate the mobilization of multilateral and bilateral political and other support at all levels – global, regional and national – by the key actors such as the President of the Fifth ICNRD (Foreign Minister of Mongolia), the International Core Group (ICG) of representatives of civil society who have led the preparations for and organization of the ICNRD International Civil Society Forum and the parliamentary focal group (PFG).