Increase efforts to implement and train officials on Articles 12.3 and 13.1 of the criminal code to investigate and prosecute sex trafficking and forced labor crimes – including those detected through child labor inspections and hotlines and handled in partnership with law enforcement counterparts in common destination countries – rather than under alternative administrative or criminal provisions that prescribe lesser penalties. * Fully implement SOPs for victim identification and referral to protective services and train government officials on their use. * Improve coordination, information-sharing, and anti-trafficking data quality among anti-trafficking agencies, including police, prosecutors, and social services. * Amend relevant laws to ensure victims have access to protection services regardless of whether officials initiate formal criminal proceedings against the alleged traffickers. * Allocate resources for the Multidisciplinary Task Force (MDTF). * Amend Articles 16.1 and 16.4 of the criminal code to increase prescribed penalties so they are aligned with penalties for other child trafficking crimes. * Amend Article 8 of the Labor Law to align its definitions with preexisting anti-trafficking laws, including by eliminating exemptions for labor in basic landscaping and cleaning. * Allocate increased funding to support and expand government- and NGO-run shelters and other forms of victim assistance, including for male and LGBTQI+ victims. * Strengthen efforts to monitor the working conditions of foreign workers in Mongolia and screen them for labor trafficking indicators by increasing funding, resources, and training for labor inspectors and facilitating unannounced inspections.

The government maintained law enforcement efforts. Article 13.1 of the criminal code criminalized sex trafficking and labor trafficking; it prescribed penalties of two to eight years’ imprisonment for offenses involving an adult victim and five to 12 years’ imprisonment for those involving a child victim. These penalties were sufficiently stringent and, with respect to sex trafficking, commensurate with those prescribed for other grave crimes, such as rape. Other provisions of the criminal code additionally criminalized some forms of labor and sex trafficking. Article 13.13 separately criminalized forced labor and prescribed fines, community service, probation, and/or one to five years’ imprisonment. Article 12.3 of the criminal code criminalized sexual exploitation offenses, including some forms of sex trafficking; penalties ranged from two to eight years’ imprisonment for trafficking offenses involving individuals older than the age of 14, and 12 to 20 years’ imprisonment for those involving children younger than the age of 14. As in prior years, authorities sometimes prosecuted trafficking crimes under statutes carrying lesser penalties. For example, the government reported prosecuting sex trafficking offenses under Article 12.6, which criminalized “organizing prostitution” involving adults and prescribed penalties of six months to three years’ imprisonment. Articles 16.1 and 16.4 criminalized “inducing a child to the committing of a crime” and “forcing a child into begging,” respectively; they both prescribed penalties of a travel ban for one to five years or one to five years’ imprisonment. In previous years, some prosecutors reportedly charged child forced begging cases as misdemeanors, rather than as more serious offenses. Observers noted complex case initiation and referral procedures and judicial officials’ general unfamiliarity with anti-trafficking laws, rapid turnover of investigators, and criminal code articles with overlapping and often conflicting definitions and penalty provisions at times hindered investigations and prosecutions.

Authorities continued to categorize certain crimes as trafficking based on Mongolia’s more expansive legal definitions, resulting in law enforcement data that at times included cases involving child pornography, sexual extortion, and “organizing prostitution;” some of these cases also included trafficking elements in line with the international law definition. The government initiated 42 trafficking investigations, including 36 sex trafficking investigations involving at least 30 alleged perpetrators and six labor trafficking investigations – three of which involved forced child labor; this was compared with 13 investigations in 2022, including 12 for sex trafficking and one for labor trafficking. The government continued monitoring sex solicitation on social media and reported 62 cases of unspecified forms of exploitation involving 36 alleged perpetrators from these efforts (52 cases and 37 perpetrators in 2022); the majority of these cases involved child pornography; it was unclear how many involved trafficking. Authorities initiated prosecution of 41 defendants, including 34 for alleged sex trafficking crimes (five defendants under Article 12.3, 12 under Article 12.6, and 17 under 13.1), and seven for alleged forced labor (under Articles 13.12, 16.4, and 16.1); this was compared with prosecutions of 50 defendants for alleged sex trafficking crimes and zero for forced labor in 2022. Courts revised the charges in at least five cases initially investigated and prosecuted under Article 13.1 to Article 12.3; cases pursued under Article 12.3 often imposed lower sentences than those pursued under Article 13.1. In addition, the Prosecutor General’s Office reported prosecuting 20 defendants under Articles 16.8 and 16.9 (“Advertising and dissemination of pornography or prostitution, inducement to a child” and “Advertising and dissemination of pornography or prostitution involving a child,” respectively), which carried lesser penalties, compared with 24 defendants the prior year; authorities did not provide sufficient detail to ascertain whether these cases featured trafficking elements according to the international law definition. The government reported 25 ongoing sex trafficking proceedings initiated in previous reporting periods compared with zero reported ongoing proceedings the prior year. Courts convicted 10 individuals for sex trafficking-related crimes in 2023 – a decrease from 35 in 2022. The courts convicted 10 traffickers under anti-trafficking articles, including four individuals under Article 12.3 and six under Article 13.1, compared with 22 individuals (13 under Article 12.3 and nine under Article 13.1) the prior year. Courts did not convict any labor traffickers for the fourth consecutive year (three in 2019). Courts also convicted 14 individuals under Articles 16.1 and 16.8, compared with 13 individuals under Articles 16.8 and 16.9 in 2022; authorities did not provide sufficient detail to ascertain whether these cases featured trafficking elements according to the international law definition. The government did not provide sentencing data for convictions in 2023. The government did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government employees complicit in human trafficking crimes; however, corruption and official complicity in trafficking crimes remained concerns. The government did not report the status of an investigation initiated in the previous reporting period related to alleged police complicity in trafficking crimes. In prior years, officials who facilitated or abetted forced labor crimes received administrative sanctions in lieu of criminal penalties.

In recent years, because of the misconception among many government officials that traffickers only exploit women and girls crossing borders, authorities rarely used Articles 12.3 or 13.1 to prosecute cases in which traffickers targeted male victims and instead used provisions with less stringent penalties. Civil society representatives reported various judicial entities often maintained conflicting or incomplete data on anti-trafficking case registration and history. A lack of sufficient training among police and prosecutors outside Ulaanbaatar on the overly complex legal codes led to inconsistent enforcement of the law, including local police dropping potential trafficking cases or misidentifying them under other criminal codes.

The National Police Agency (NPA) anti-trafficking unit investigated trafficking crimes under Criminal Code Articles 12.3 and 13.1, and an NPA cyber-crime division investigated crimes under Articles 16.8 and 16.9; the NPA’s cyber-crime unit, which may investigate Internet-facilitated trafficking crimes, increased staffing from 40 to 80 personnel. The Prosecutor General’s Office was responsible for prosecuting alleged traffickers and had a division assigned to specialize in supervising investigations of trafficking crimes and prosecuting trafficking cases. Observers reported improved interagency coordination among police, prosecutors, and civil society, although legal barriers remained an obstacle to successful prosecutions.

In partnership with international organizations and NGOs, the government continued training law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and immigration officials on topics including conducting victim-centered and child-friendly investigations and identifying and referring trafficking victims to services. Observers continued to describe an acute need for additional training, resources, and dedicated personnel to properly handle trafficking cases. It was unclear if training had resulted in increased use of victim-centered approaches in practice.

The government increased efforts to protect victims. According to available data, police identified 30 Mongolian trafficking victims, including 20 women and nine girls exploited in sex trafficking, and one male labor trafficking victim; this was compared with 56 sex trafficking victims (49 women and seven girls) identified in 2022. The labor trafficking victim represented the first male victim identified by Mongolian authorities in over a decade. However, authorities did not report identifying any foreign trafficking victims for the second consecutive year. The government did not have formal written procedures for proactive victim identification. Instead, investigators and immigration officials had access to a victim identification checklist, although use was sporadic, especially in rural areas. In addition, district and provincial police either lacked training on the checklist or were unaware of its existence, which may have resulted in cases dropped at the local level and fewer victims referred to NPA investigators. NGOs indicated victim identification and referral procedures were vague, not sufficiently systematic, and often depended largely on the awareness and initiative of individual officers. Officials did not routinely screen vulnerable groups. A lack of formalized screening and identification procedures, as well as untrained officers, contributed to authorities detaining and arresting some trafficking victims for crimes committed as a direct result of being trafficked, particularly girl sex trafficking victims. In previous years, observers noted some victims did not self-report or testify because of fear they could face prosecution.

Government officials lacked training on how to identify and refer to care child victims of forced labor. Social and child protection workers began using procedures for victim identification and referral to services adopted by the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection (MLSP) in 2022, but a continued lack of training for labor inspectors and social workers limited the referral system’s use. Police, social workers, and labor inspectors reportedly identified two cases of child labor in hazardous work during joint inspections, which may have amounted to trafficking.

The government allocated 30 million MNT ($8,796) to NGOs to provide shelter, psycho-social and medical care, and legal assistance, the same amount allocated in the prior year. NGOs continued to provide the majority of Mongolia’s limited victim services, in some cases with government assistance. Similar to the conflicting or incomplete anti-trafficking case management and history data maintained by various judicial entities, observers have also noted overlapping or conflicting victim services and referral data between different government agencies and government-assisted NGOs. In 2023, 77 adult and child sex trafficking victims and 16 forced labor victims were referred to services by NGOs, according to combined government and civil society estimates, compared with 45 sex trafficking victims referred to services the prior year. In prior years, civil society contacts expressed concern Mongolia’s complex referral system could have re-traumatized some victims because of the requirement they repeatedly recount their abuses at various stages. The MDTF had five child-friendly spaces, including two new spaces opened in 2023, at police stations and court houses to allow children, including trafficking victims, to provide evidence in safe, less-traumatizing environments.

There were two NGO-run trafficking-specific shelters. The government operated 34 low-capacity temporary shelters and one-stop service centers for women and child victims of domestic and sexual abuse, including one NPA-operated shelter for victims of sexual violence and one temporary shelter for children operated by the Family, Child, and Youth Development Agency (FCYDA), both of which could serve trafficking victims. Authorities also referred at least 29 victims to NGOs for shelter or health services, but observers noted the referral process as inefficient and untimely. Among the 29 victims, the government referred nine child trafficking victims to government- and NGO-run shelter services (compared with 19 children referred in 2022). Long-term shelter services were not available for child trafficking victims. However, the FCYDA and MDTF established a rehabilitation center in October 2023 to help child victims with their recovery through long-term psychological care and other services. NGOs also operated two shelters for women in commercial sex and women and child sex trafficking victims; one of these shelters remained because of a security breach. There were no shelters for men or the LGBTQI+ community, and few shelters, if any, were accessible for people with disabilities. In practice, LGBTQI+ victims could receive shelter if they were minors, women, able to pass as cisgender women, or did not explicitly reveal their sexuality.

The Law on Criminal Procedure and Law on Victim and Witness Protection provided protections for the physical security and privacy of victims and witnesses. The NPA anti-trafficking unit reported referring some trafficking victims to witness and victim protection services in 2023. Article 8.1 of the Law on Criminal Procedure states that a victim must be formally recognized by the decision of an investigator, prosecutor, or the court; this language has reportedly been used to deny potential trafficking victims access to protective services. Some officials claimed victims could still access protection services regardless of whether relevant prosecutions had begun; nevertheless, the language represented a barrier to access for potential trafficking victims. Authorities did not provide victims with alternatives to speaking with law enforcement during investigations. Victims could provide testimony via written statements and could obtain employment and move freely within Mongolia, or leave the country pending trial proceedings; however, child victims’ testimony required a legal guardian’s verification and approval to be admitted as evidence, posing added risks to abandoned children or to children whose guardians were complicit in their child’s trafficking. The government reported 11 victims participating in investigations with most receiving some form of witness protection services. In January 2024, the government passed the Child Protection Law to formalize the MDTF and to refine case management protocols and ensure comprehensive delivery of protection services to vulnerable children, including trafficking victims, effective in September 2024.

In November 2023, the government issued implementing regulations on providing trafficking victims access to legal counsel and representation, as required under the anti-trafficking law. The government did not report issuing court-ordered restitution to any trafficking victims, compared with 34 victims receiving court-ordered restitution in 2022. Article 15 of the 2012 anti-trafficking law entitled victims to compensation from traffickers; however, inconsistencies between the criminal code and the civil code made this provision difficult to implement. The government did not report any victims receiving compensation this reporting period. Observers noted that in practice, compensation was mainly provided to a victim’s family for burial expenses when victims died. Mongolia’s General Intelligence Agency, the General Authority for Border Protection (GABP), and the Consular Department within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs shared responsibility for handling cases involving Mongolian trafficking victims abroad. The latter maintained a fund to assist Mongolian victims, but it was only available in cases involving organized crime syndicates or “grave harm” – a distinction that was unclear in application. In 2023, authorities partnered with NGOs to repatriate 12 Mongolian victims from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Laos, and Thailand, compared with 12 Mongolian victims repatriated from Burma in 2022. Authorities did not report repatriating foreign victims for the second consecutive year. Mongolian law did not provide legal alternatives to the removal of foreign victims to countries in which they could face retribution or hardship.

The government slightly increased efforts to prevent trafficking. The government’s most recent NAP ended in 2021; since then, observers noted efforts to shift resources from designing action plans to strengthening anti-trafficking partnerships and legal frameworks. The National Sub-Council on Trafficking in Persons (“the council”), which directed the previous NAP, met twice in 2023. The MDTF worked to combat child trafficking at the working level and comprises 18 government and NGO representatives. The MDTF met at least quarterly and continued to implement its Strategic Action Plan to combat child trafficking, devoting more staff time across the interagency to facilitate collaboration in child services.

The government increased the Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs’ anti-trafficking budget to 240 million MNT ($70,367) in 2023 from 227.8 million MNT ($66,790) in 2022. It designated 30 million MNT ($8,796) of this budget for contracted services with at least one NGO, 70 million MNT ($20,524) for awareness-raising activities, and the remainder for purchasing equipment and tools for the NPA, GABP, and National Forensics Agency. The government collaborated with a foreign government to research trafficking issues and child protection efforts; the government did not publish results from research programs conducted in 2022. In partnership with NGOs, international organizations, and foreign donors, the government conducted a national campaign to raise awareness of trafficking which included social media outreach, radio broadcast spots, and awareness raising activities at schools, such as essay writing contests and distributing trafficking-related comic books.

The government funded an NGO to maintain a hotline system; the NGO identified at least 13 cases involving 11 child victims through the hotline, which were referred for criminal investigations. FCYDA ran another 24-hour hotline that coordinated referrals to special welfare and protection, emergency response, and shelter services for child victims. The FCYDA hotline received 111,223 calls in 2023, including 28 calls on possible child sex trafficking cases and 272 calls on possible “hazardous child labor” cases. The government did not report if any of these calls led to police investigations for suspected trafficking crimes, compared with the previous year when investigators followed up with 317 children after receiving 251 calls on possible “hazardous child labor.”

The MLSP’s General Agency for Labor and Social Welfare had the authority to monitor labor agreements for foreign nationals working in Mongolia, as well as those for Mongolians working in countries with which the government had bilateral work agreements. The government maintained such agreements with the Republic of Korea (ROK) and Japan; observers noted authorities did not always sufficiently implement these agreements to prevent labor abuses, including trafficking. A 2023 change to the labor inspection process decentralized labor inspection authority from the national level to the ministerial level. Observers stated that the change reduced the total number of labor inspectors. NGOs noted funding and resources for the inspectors were insufficient to provide comprehensive oversight. The government reported conducting 2,887 labor inspections in 2023, but did not report if any resulted in the identification of cases of forced labor. Labor laws gave inspectors “unrestricted access to legal entities, organizations, and workplaces which are subject to inspection without prior notice;” however, a competing law still required inspectors to give employers two days’ advance notification before conducting an inspection, raising concerns employers could conceal violations in the interim. The government did not report conducting unannounced labor inspections, but it did conduct preventative assessments at workplaces and issued recommendations based on identified problems. Labor laws explicitly prohibited labor agents from charging workers recruitment fees, confiscating workers’ identity or travel documentation, switching their contracts without consent, or garnishing or withholding their wages as collateral; authorities did not report information on implementation of these provisions.

As reported over the past five years, human traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in Mongolia, and they exploit victims from Mongolia abroad. Traffickers may also use Mongolia as a transit point to exploit foreign individuals in sex trafficking and forced labor in Russia and the PRC. From January 2020 to January 2023, the Mongolia-PRC border closed to passenger and pedestrian traffic because of pandemic-related mitigation polices; during this time, observers reported transnational trafficking decreased and domestic trafficking reportedly increased. As of January 2023, border restrictions had been lifted but crossings remain limited. Most sex trafficking of Mongolian victims from rural and poor economic areas occurs in Ulaanbaatar, provincial centers, and border areas. Mongolian communities experiencing widespread unemployment – especially women and informal sector workers – were especially vulnerable to sex trafficking and forced labor. LGBTQI+ individuals are vulnerable to trafficking amid widespread discrimination that often jeopardizes their employment status and complicates their access to justice. Transgender women in particular are at higher risk of sex trafficking because of pervasive social stigma barring them from employment in the formal sector. Domestic violence continues to drive the vast majority of Mongolian trafficking victims to seek and accept unsafe employment opportunities on which traffickers prey.

Traffickers continue exploiting women and girls in sex trafficking in Mongolian hotels, massage parlors, illegal brothels, bars, and karaoke clubs, as well as in outdoor urban areas, sometimes facilitated by a lack of enforcement of local police. Traffickers often utilize online platforms to lure, groom, or blackmail victims, including Mongolian children, into domestic sex trafficking. Japanese and ROK nationals reportedly engaged in extraterritorial commercial child sexual exploitation and abuse in Mongolia in prior years and some civil society groups believe this practice persists. Traffickers sometimes use drugs, fraudulent social networking, online job opportunities, or English-language programs to lure Mongolian victims into sex trafficking abroad. Some men in the predominantly ethnic Kazakh regions of western Mongolia subject local women and girls to abduction and forced marriage as part of a cultural practice known as Ala kachuu, or “grab and run”; some of these forced marriages may feature corollary sex trafficking or forced labor elements. Other traffickers compelled women and girls to work in domestic service and engage in commercial sex acts after entering into commercially brokered marriages with men from the PRC and, to a lesser extent, the ROK.

The mining industry’s ongoing development in southern Mongolia drives growing internal migration, intensifying trafficking vulnerabilities. This was especially the case along the PRC-Mongolia border prior to the pandemic. Stringent border restrictions between January 2020 and January 2023 during the pandemic limited movement across the border, while creating new vulnerabilities. For example, women and girls in affected coal mining and trucking communities faced additional pandemic-induced economic hardships, increasing their vulnerability to trafficking, and truckers desperate to make deliveries across restricted borders were vulnerable to labor exploitation. Since the end of the pandemic, the end of border restrictions, new train lines, and improved logistics management have mitigated some of these concerns. Nevertheless, mining and trucking communities near the border remain vulnerable to labor and sex trafficking because of poorer living conditions, itinerant work, and a lack of public services.

Children working in informal sectors of the Mongolian economy such as artisanal mining, horseracing, herding and animal husbandry, landfill scavenging, and construction are often younger than the country’s minimum age of employment and vulnerable to forced labor. In particular, Mongolian boys engaging in work as horse jockeys and circus performers are vulnerable to sex and labor trafficking, in part because of frequent travel domestically and abroad. Children living in poverty or who are abandoned by their families are often recruited into child labor, increasing their risk to forced labor. Some Mongolian families are complicit in exploiting children in sex trafficking and forced labor.

Traffickers exploit Mongolian men, women, and children in forced labor and sex trafficking in the PRC, ROK, Türkiye, and the United States, as well as other countries in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Traffickers reportedly increasingly exploited Mongolian victims in Türkiye because of visa-free travel regimes, the availability of direct flights, and shifts in migration trends after the pandemic-related closure of the PRC border. PRC national workers employed in Mongolia are vulnerable to trafficking as contract laborers in construction, manufacturing, agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting, wholesale and retail trade, automobile maintenance, and mining. As of September 2023, as many as 7,880 PRC nationals were reportedly working in Mongolia. Observers report corruption among some Mongolian officials impedes the government’s anti-trafficking efforts.