The 21st century brought with it new hopes, opportunities and aspirations. The Millennium Declaration, endorsed by 189 governments at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2000, reflected those aspirations. World leaders made an unprecedented commitment to work together to ensure a more peaceful, prosperous and just world. The Millennium  Development Goals advance a global vision to improve the human condition and strengthen efforts to reduce poverty, enhance human rights and democracy, and promote protection of the environment.

Despite being global goals, the MDGs were adapted by countries and aligned with their national priorities to local realization. Mongolia is one of the few countries to have a 9th MDG on ‘Strengthening Human Rights and Fostering Democratic Governance’ that emphasizes democratic governance and human rights as necessary conditions for the achievement of all the MDGs. The targets were revised in 2008 and there are a total of 24 targets with 67 indicators for the nine MDGs.

MDGs are strongly embedded at the policy level in Mongolia. The Parliament adopted the MDGs as development benchmarks in 2005 and then as the framework for the MDG-Based Comprehensive National Development Strategy (CNDS) of 2008-21. The first phase included aligning the country’s development objectives with the MDG targets. As part of the implementation process of the MDGs and CNDS, the government has launched a number of initiatives to enhance strategic and economic planning and their coordination and management. The government established an independent agency responsible for economic development planning and introduced several changes in financing and budgeting systems.

After adopting the CNDS in 2009, the government established a specialized agency – the National Development and Innovation Committee –responsible for development planning. In 2012,the responsibilities and duties of the committee
were extended and the agency was upgraded into the Ministry of Economic Development (MED). The MDGs have become an effective tool to enhance capacities in areas of policy formulation in Mongolia, as well as improve their implementation and monitoring systems. Progress in the realization of national MDGs depends greatly on their implementation at the local level. Thus it was important to localize MDGs with specific features of particular regions. During the MDG localization process, training programs on preparing medium-term plans and aligning local priorities with the MDGs were organized for local policy-makers. Currently, all aimags and Ulaanbaatar have identified local MDG targets and put in place implementation and monitoring mechanisms.