Ganbayasgakh Geleg

The founder of the Mongolian Gender Equality Center, Ganbayasgakh Geleg has been helping victims of trafficking since 2002.

Ms. Ganbayasgakh had already been active for many years helping victims of domestic violence, and children, before she founded the Center in 2002. She founded the Center to provide residential services, counseling, advocacy, rehabilitation, and other services to victims of trafficking. After a small start, and a difficult climb against the weight of governmental opinion, MGEC started making incredible headway. The penal code provisions relating to human trafficking were changed, and MGEC started to be able to get financial compensation for some of their victims. They opened the first dedicated shelter for trafficking victims in 2008, in partnership with the Human Security Policy Studies Center and the Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation. The second shelter became operational in 2009, in a border town. The second shelter is primarily focused on sex trafficking victims escaping from a Chinese city on the other side of the border. Hundreds of survivors have passed through both shelters.

Ms. Ganbayasgakh has also been heavily active in awareness building, and has trained police, government officials, students, social workers, psychologists, and others on human trafficking. She has designed curricula for universities, and pamphlets, including one for psychologists working with trafficking survivors. She has also been instrumental in setting up informal partnerships between police on both sides of the border with China. A formal memorandum of understanding was signed by several police chiefs in 2009. They have also run the nation’s only human trafficking hotline since 2006. In 2008, she was honored as a "TIP Report Hero Acting to End Modern Slavery" in recognition of her incredible dedication to survivors of human trafficking. The Mongolian Gender Equality Center continues to work in Mongolia to provide support and services for survivors of trafficking in every form.

In the 2014 TIP Report, Mongolia was listed as a Tier 2 country. It is a source and a destination country for forced labor, and a source country for sex trafficking. Some trafficking for sexual purposes also occurs internally. Many Mongolian women are still trafficked to China for sexual exploitation, sometimes through the guise of brokered marriages.