Attachments
Introduction
Mongolian Red Cross Society (MRCS) was established in 1939 during the first meeting of the ‘Mongolian Red Cross Coalition’. With the legal amendments in 2016, the MRCS changed its status from “national society” to “national humanitarian assistance organisation”, as a sole nationwide humanitarian organisation that has a mandate to act as an auxiliary to the Mongolian government. The MRCS has significant outreach in country through its thirty-four mid-level branches, 14800 trained volunteers and 78600 Red Cross youth members. The National Society (NS) operates their programmes, projects and initiatives through four main programmes of disaster management; social inclusion, development; public health promotion; and Red Cross Youth.
In terms of natural hazard risks, Mongolia is vulnerable to a wide variety of natural hazards including storms, droughts, floods, earthquakes and other extreme weather events such as ‘dzud’ or severe winter condition in which livestock would perish in large number due to cold and or malnourishment, weakened by summer droughts. Dzud may occur every four to five years imposing major impact on herder families and their livelihoods. In 2010, Mongolia due to this event, nearly twenty five percent (9.7 million) of the country’s livestock died.
Flooding can also cause severe impact as more than 200000 people and over 100 schools are located in medium-to-high flood hazard areas in Ulaanbaatar, in the capital where unplanned urban development further increases country’s vulnerability