Major D. Tumenbayar

A high-ranking Police Officer in the South of Mongolia, Major Tumenbayar has been crucial to the fight against cross-border human trafficking.

According to a major NGO in the region, Major Tumenbayar’s role in the police force and his location, in a southern town alongside the border with China, have allowed him to become an essential asset to the anti-trafficking community in Mongolia. By 2008, he had worked in that police station for five years, and he was in tenth year with the Police Service. The Mongolian Gender Equality Center (MGEC) has worked closely with him to repatriate victims, and to watch for signs of human trafficking in cross-border practices in the border town. By 2008, he had repatriated 26 Mongolian victims from China. Some of those victims were under the age of 18, some as young as 16. His reputation and his commitment have allowed him to influence community opinion about human trafficking, and he has ventured beyond and above the call of duty to help and identify trafficking victims.

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.