MONFEMNET is a coalition of 22 women’s rights and feminist organizations in Mongolia. Its diverse membership includes young women, lesbian, bisexual and trans (LBT) individuals, women with disabilities, Indigenous Peoples, rural women, nomadic herders and urban poor women. It works to ensure gender justice in Mongolia through grassroots organizing and popular education. MONFEMNET prioritizes economic justice, resistance against extractivism, and sexual and Reproductive health and rights. 

MONFEMNET’s workstreams are:

• Solidarity and movement building: As the largest women’s coalition in the country, MONFEMNET plays a crucial role in fostering cross-movement solidarity with other social movements through dialogue, joint activities, and mobilization. For example, the coalition actively engages with movements focused on people with disabilities, human rights and press freedom.
• Community outreach and popular education: In collaboration with members and allies, MONFEMNET conducts regular community outreach and popular education in Mongolia’s urban poor and rural areas. These educational initiatives focus on economic justice issues, such as valuing the overlooked contributions of women in domestic work, resistance against extractivism, the importance of solidarity-based economic work through women-led cooperatives, and the rights of workers in the popular economy.
• Feminist collective care: Recognizing the heightened legal and physical risks women face resisting extractivism, MONFEMNET has established a community-based rapid response mechanism to provide legal assistance, childcare and psychosocial support for women Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) in need. It also creates spaces for conversation in and healing through feminist collective care, while advocating for resources to enact collective care practices within feminist organizations.

MONFEMNET advocates for progressive policies to safeguard women’s rights, particularly in resisting extractivism and establishing women-led livelihood initiatives. It is worth noting that there is some criminalization of women HRDs who resisted extractivism. In response, in 2021, MONFEMNET played a pivotal role in pushing for the approval of the HRD Protection Law. The law is a groundbreaking law and the first in Asia, which offers legal safeguard for HRD. Additionally, MONFEMNET advocates for women’s participation in the national and local government’s budgeting processes to ensure that women’s priorities are reflected in state programs.