One year after a period of extreme cold – known in Mongolian as a dzud – the IFRC and the Mongolian Red Cross continue to work together to help families recover from the economic and emotional impact of losing beloved family members or essential livestock.
The sun shone high in the sky over the vast grasslands of Sukhbaatar province, Eastern Mongolia, as 54-year-old Altantuya Damdinsuren and her elder sister Ochirbat Damdinsuren received members of the Red Cross with wide smiles.
Inside their ‘ger’ (the name for a traditional Mongolian dwelling), they were busy cooking mutton dumplings and hot bone broth for their visitors, all sourced from their very own herd. It is Mongolian custom to offer a lot of food, sweets, and drinks to visitors.
The Mongolian Red Cross and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) were there to visit with the two sisters to see how they are doing one year after a long period of extreme cold one year ago devastated local herding families.
Their visit was part of an effort to assess how well people are recovering after receiving critical Red Cross assistance, including cash, animal kits, hay, fodder, psychosocial support and more.
Among the offered dishes was a bowl of homemade milk cheese, taken from the first milk of their cow after newborn calf had been fed. The animals of Mongolian herders are more than just a source of sustenance – they are companions for life. Herder families help their animals live, eat, give birth, survive the cold, traverse the vast landscape, and remain healthy.
On top of a side table were two large plates of what appeared to be homegrown grass, cultivated by the two sisters. Altantuya picks them up and says, “These are for my animals.”
Recovering from devastating loss
Such intimate care of livestock is normal here, but it has been especially critical recently as communities recovered from last year’s extreme cold weather (locally known as a ‘dzud’) that unfolded one year ago. Throughout Mongolia, over 180,000 herder households were severely affected. By July 2024, over 8 million livestock, or 12.5 per cent of the overall livestock in Mongolia had tragically perished, according to Mongolian Red Cross.
This dramatic loss triggered widespread food insecurity, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, reducing the production of staple meat and dairy products dramatically, driving up prices, and disrupted supply chains. Meanwhile, heavy snowfall severely limited the herder’s access to markets.
The combined effects of increased debt burdens diminished purchasing power and further drove up inflation. Escalating costs for hay and fodder, meanwhile, aggravated the hardships faced by all herding families, but particularly by single-headed households like Altantuya’s or families with children.
“Heads of herder households particularly had difficulties coping with the stress of losing their beloved animals,” says Dr. Gantulga Batbyamba, Director of the Health Department for the Mongolian Red Cross Society*. “Livestock loss negatively impacts their mental health, and this them feeling hopeless and stressed for their future. In addition, heavy snows that accompanied the extreme cold meant that grown children living in nearby cities, or younger children in weekday boarding schools, could not return home for long periods.”*
Altantuya herself lost almost 400 livestock from her precious herd of horse, goat, sheep, and cattle. Only about 100 animals including new borns, now remain in her care, and her main source of income has always been largely from livestock – she also receives pension from the state.
To cope with this huge loss of livelihood since last year’s dzud, Altantuya has taken two separate loans – one from a bank and the other against her pension.
Mongolian Red Cross Society response
To help people like Altantuya recover from this devastation blow, the Mongolian Red Cross has been working alongside herder communities when the Dzud hit. One of the very first things it did was to provide animal care kits and multipurpose cash for herder households.
For Altantuya —and for more than 80 per cent of the families surveyed, that cash became a lifeline, and a lot of it was spent quickly on extra hay, fodder, and nutrition to keep their animals alive.
Much of this support was made possible by resources mobilized through a global IFRC Emergency Appeal, and these funds went towards providing cash to households in need, animal care kits, and support aimed at helping people deal with the mental health and psychological impacts of the disaster.
Within the animal care kits are fish oil, hoof and eye ointment, powdered vitamins and salt licks, which helped her animals survive the harsh weather. Mongolian Red Cross also gave food for the families as they did not have enough resources to prepare for their own food.
“Hay and fodder are the most valuable assistance to us,” Altantuya says*. “It allows us to help our animals survive*.”
Mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) have also been critical. MRCS conducted extensive outreach on psychosocial first aid, home visits to herder families, and in-person visits to soum centres (districts) and held activities in boarding schools to support children separated from their families. They also set up a local hotline for online and remote support, as well as disseminated key messages on mental health to many communities.
As herder families live in far-flung and extremely remote areas, home visits along with mental health care, as well as regular phone calls from Red Cross staff, have been a great relief indeed, says Dr Gantulga, adding that IFRC surge support for mental health and psychosocial support trainings have allowed the Mongolian Red Cross to strengthen MHPSS and psychological first aid skills for staff and volunteers.
While Altantuya shrugs off her difficulties, her elder sister Ochirbat notes that life during winter in Mongolia is never easy, and it’s even harder during an extremely cold weather.
“When it gets very cold, we have to make sure the animals don’t lie down even for a while in the cold; they will not be able to get back up again and will freeze to death,” she says. “My sister physically pushes or pulls them back up to make them stand and continue standing by themselves.”
One year after the 2024 Dzud, the Mongolian Red Cross Society and the IFRC continuing to help herder households to get back on their feet, delivering critical humanitarian assistance and services to families and to many others in need. For herder families like Altantuya and her sister, the only hope after such events is to rebuild their herd and start again.
By Rachel Punitha, IFRC Senior Communications Officer, Asia Pacific Region