STATEMENT BY H.E. Ms. ENKHTSETSEG OCHIR,
AMBASSADOR, PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE
OF MONGOLIA TO THE UNITED NATIONS
ON AGENDA ITEM 12 ENTITLED
SUPPORT BY THE UNITED NATIONS SYSTEM OF THE
EFFORTS OF GOVERNMENTS TO PROMOTE AND CONSOLIDATE
NEW OR RESTORED DEMOCRACIES
5 November 2007

Mr. President,

At the outset, I would like, on behalf of my Government, to congratulate the Government of the State of Qatar on having successfully convened the Sixth International Conference of New or Restored Democracies under the main theme of “Building Capacity for Democracy, Peace and Social Progress� in Doha from 29 October to 1 November last year.

The conference was a resounding success with participants from 145 countries, 69 Parliaments, and 140 civil society organizations. It marked an important step in the progressive development of the global new or restored democracies (NRD) process. Moreover, the significance of the Doha Conference as the first global event on democracy promotion to take place in the region of the Middle East cannot be underestimated. Its main theme, with a focus on fundamental issues of peace, democracy and social progress, addressed universally shared aspirations of the world’s people, at the same time it also succeeded in reflecting specific concerns and aspirations of the people in the host region of the Middle East.

It is gratifying to note that a tri-partite structure of the ICNRD, first introduced at the Fifth Conference held in my own country, was fully utilized and developed further in Doha. The adoption for the first time of a joint statement of all three components of the Conference – governments, parliaments and civil society - reaffirming their common commitment to the process of further democratization and the importance of promoting democracy as a shared responsibility was a truly pioneering initiative to be sustained in future.

Mr. President,

The true merit of convening global conferences with resultant outcome documents lies in the practical actions designed to implement what we have all agreed upon and adopted at these gatherings. It is with this in mind that Mongolia undertook a number of initiatives in line with the recommendations of the Fifth Conference which it hosted back in 2003.

The substantive follow-up process in Mongolia included the development of nationally-owned Democratic Governance Indicators (DGIs) to measure democratic performance and democratization progress, and the Country Information Note (CIN), another assessment tool that provides a quantitative evaluation framework for new or restored democracies. Furthermore, based on the findings of both the DGIs and the CIN, a draft National Plan of Action to Consolidate Democracy in Mongolia was developed. The Plan of Action defined the most urgent tasks Mongolia needs to undertake in addressing the challenges to its democratic governance. In this respect, we look forward to the planned expert group meeting on the development of national plans on democracy, as agreed by the ICNRD6 Advisory Board meeting last April in Doha, to share and learn from others’ experiences. 

Mongolia has made an intellectual commitment to tailor its DGIs specifically to the requirements of national policymakers. Our approach was to have two sets of indicators, core indicators, concerned with universal attributes of democracy, and hence relevant in all democratic societies, and satellite indicators, reflecting the specificities of the country, its nomadic civilization, its geopolitical situation, specifics of its constitutional arrangement, spatial distribution of the population, social profiles of our urban and rural population, gender and education aspects and others.

The backbone of this exercise has been the State of Democracy assessment methodology developed by the International IDEA. Here, I wish to extend our deep gratitude to both the UNDP and the IDEA for their commitment to and support of our follow-up activities. My delegation would also like to strongly endorse the recommendation by the Secretary-General that future Conference hosts could use IDEA as a continuous resource given its extensive knowledge base. Mongolia also wishes to welcome the IDEA’s plans to enhance its strategic outreach and programmatic relations with the United Nations so as to increase both the policy relevance and impact of the work of IDEA on democracy-building. The opening of an office in New York as Permanent Observer for International IDEA to the United Nations is an important step in this direction. 

Mr. President,

Mongolia’s follow-up experiences were shared with other countries and democracy experts at the International Follow-Up Conference on New or Restored Democracies held in Ulaanbaatar in June 2006. Furthermore, our delegation to the Doha Conference, headed by the Minister for Foreign Affairs H.E. Mr.Enkhbold Nyamaa, also shared its follow-up experience with the participants and presented a report on Mongolia’s activities in its capacity as Chair of ICNRD5.

We trust that our follow-up will be further sustained and hopefully institutionalized in light of the new initiative to link Mongolia’s MDGs achievement with democracy progress as the Parliament of Mongolia proclaimed its MDG-9 on human rights, democracy and zero-tolerance to corruption. We are fully aware of the complexity of the task of identifying the quantifiable indicators to be developed for measuring progress on MDG 9. This challenging and pioneering work is being supported by the UN Democracy Fund. So far, it is envisioned that the DGI methodology and results will be mainstreamed into the targets of MDG 9. In this respect, we note with great interest the development of human rights indicators initiated by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to focus on the translation of universal human rights standards into operational and contextually relevant indicators that can promote the monitoring of the implementation of these rights at the country level.

Within the framework of working towards meeting the MDG 9 the Parliament passed a new law against corruption, thus creating a legal environment to remove the shackles that this phenomenon imposes on development. In addition, a new Anti-corruption body has been recently set up to deal with public awareness raising, prevention and detection of corruption, investigation of corruption cases and auditing of financial and income declarations of public officials. Mongolia also joined the UN Convention against Corruption and endeavors to implement its provisions at the national level.

Mr. President,

We welcome the emphasis placed by Qatar as current ICNRD Chair on ensuring a systematic follow-up on and implementation of the ICNRD6 decisions. The productive outcomes of the two meetings of the ICNRD Advisory Board, of which my country is honored to be a member, have proven the usefulness of that mechanism. I would like to specifically highlight the importance of developing and maintaining the new democracy databank to facilitate exchange of experience and expertise among states on their democratization efforts.

An important principle underlying our movement is that while democracy cannot be imported from abroad, it has to be encouraged and supported by the international community through cooperation and assistance. As seen from the Secretary-General’s report on the agenda item before us the United Nations system has been undertaking variety of activities by in support of democracy around the globe. My delegation is also heartened by the personal commitment of the Secretary-General to promotion of democracy as one of the priorities of his term in office.  

My delegation wishes to particularly welcome the information provided in the report on the work of major intergovernmental movements and organizations in democracy promotion and on how the United Nations system has worked and could further work with them in a mutually supportive way. It would be advisable to have a study on the inter-agency coordination and coherence of democracy promotion efforts undertaken by the United Nations system. Such a study should in our view present concrete proposals and recommendations on streamlining and bringing more coherence into the actions by different UN stakeholders in democracy promotion.

I agree with the suggestion made by the Secretary-General that the United Nations system should provide technical support in the creation of the democracy databank and website. I should like here to go even further and propose that a comprehensive UN web portal, perhaps with the following address as “democracy.un.org� could be set up incorporating data on democracy promotion related activities undertaken by the UN system, as well as the relevant work within the framework of the ICNRD and CD.

Mr. President,

Mongolia has long been working proactively in order to bring closer together the Community of Democracies (CD) and the ICNRD as two global intergovernmental movements sharing the same goal of promotion and consolidation of democracy. A few years ago my delegation developed a Non-Paper on possible ways of bringing closer the two movements and shared it among their wide membership. As a member of both the ICNRD Advisory Board and CD Convening Group, Mongolia stands ready to continue such efforts in cooperation with other interested members.

In conclusion, may I reiterate my delegation’s strong support to the draft resolution entitled “Support by the UN system of the efforts of governments to promote and consolidate new or restored democracies� contained in document A/62/L.9 and appeal to the wider membership of the United Nations to take concerted efforts in its follow-up.

I thank you.