NGOs in Mongolia play a crucial role. In the meantime, as Mongolia underwent fundamental changes in its social and political systems at the end of the 1980s. In the beginning of the 1990s, civil society and its legal framework began to develop. Since the collapse of Communism in 1989, Mongolia has advanced its democracy and human rights. Mongolia abandoned the socialist way of the development in politics, economy and lifestyle. In this research, I will focus on identifying the concept of the NGOs. What are NGOs? What are their functions in the development of democracy? More specifically, I also analyze the funding resource of the NGOs in Mongolia. The second task in this thesis is to investigate the extent to which the NGOs are able to serve as an agent for creating a civil society in Mongolia. In particular, I identify two dimensions - supervising the government and freedom of speech – as important elements of civil society. I was curious about if the NGOs can help to preserve their values when dealing with the mining issue in Mongolia. There is always as debate between environmental protection and economic development in the means of mining business. What I found was that the NGOs are limited in their ability to supervise the government because they need to count on the government for financial subsistence, and what makes it even worse is that the NGOs sometimes receive money from the mining companies, however indirectly. In addition, I look into a case where protesters speak out against the government and the mining business, but unfortunately they are somehow killed in the protest. Although this serves as the most extreme case, it indicates the possibility that environmental protesters are in danger and the NGOs are not able to provide proper shelter in Mongolia. All in all, NGOs start to become a hope for creating and participating in a civil society. However, because of the financial limitation, NGOs have the difficulty in serving as an oversight agent and let the government take responsibility for mining pollution.
