Sajjad Zohir and Mahesh Patel

As a part of multi-country study, the exercise was undertaken for IDS- Sussex, meant to assess the roles of UN agencies in promoting poverty reduction strategy (PRS). It was revealing to learn of various actors engaged in reshaping the destiny of a land-locked country. Many stories however remain untold in a report.

This report is one of eight studies of UN agencies’ involvement in the preparation of country-level Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) and/or National Development Strategy (NDS) in various less developed countries.1 Mongolia is an exception since it is a low-income country with per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of US $690 (in 2005), and since it is not a member of the LDCs.2 More importantly, Mongolia is not a PRS country even though a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, called the EGSPRS, was prepared in 2003.3 The EGSPRSP was accepted at the meetings of the Executive Boards of the World Bank and the IMF, even though no resources came into the country from the two agencies under the PRS commitments. Mongolia however is a country on full roll, where the UNCT’s practices have been considered as ‘best practice’ model, and one UN is vigorously pursued. It is also a country in transition where the politics of governance has been undergoing significant changes since the beginning of the 1990’s; and UN agencies’ partnership in the process continues to be highly valued by the Government of Mongolia (GOM).