Internal Migration

Since the 1990s, Mongolia has been experiencing increasing flows of people moving from rural areas to urban settlements, brought about as a result of developmental discrepancies between rural and urban areas, limited access to education, health, and employment in rural areas, and climate change. This has led to almost half of the country’s population concentrated in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital, causing a significant burden on the availability of social services, worsening environmental pollution, and increasing traffic congestion.

Migration to urban areas is often a path for Mongolians to improve their livelihoods - the average monthly income of households who migrated to Ulaanbaatar increases by 45 percent after arriving in the capital (IOM, 2021 - add link to Mongolia: Migration and Employment study). However, IOM’s research shows that when migration is forced, migrants are more likely to be unregistered which limits their access to health, education, and public services and deepens their vulnerability (IOM, 2021 - add link to migration ban study here).

IOM believes that well managed migration and investing in the integration of migrants support their contribution to the economy and the development of the country as a whole. Within this framework, IOM cooperates with government organizations, NGOs, and civil society organizations to implement the following activities:

• Migration data: Improving the quality of national data on internal migration for evidence-based policies and programmes, particularly, capturing the real data of the mobile population through DTM methodology.
• Migration governance: Mainstreaming internal migration into national, local, and sectoral policies in a comprehensive and coordinated way.
• Targeted interventions: Improving the socio-economic wellbeing of migrants through increased access to information, services and targeted programmes.