Ulaanbaatar
Law on Administrative, Territorial Units and their Governance revised
Politics
Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. On December 24, State Great Khural, Mongolian parliament approved the revised Law on Administrative and Territorial Units and their Governance.
In November 2019, Mongolia made amendments to its Constitution, which required revisions and amendments to more than 40 law and one of them was the law on Law on Administrative and Territorial Units and their Governance.
The revised law provides legal basis for citizens to take part in local governance, directly and through their representatives while offering clearer delineation of functions to be performed by different tiers of administrative units - soum, aimag, district and the capital city. The law is expected to ensure independence of local government bodies and strengthen finance and economic basis of local development.
Soums in aimags and districts in Ulaanbaatar city are now regulated to serve as territorial units of local self-government, bestowed with responsibilities and powers to resolve issues concerned local communities and make certain decisions regarding economic and social agenda within their own territories.
Core responsibilities of aimags, representation of common interests of soums in their territories, are to implement government policy and decisions and administer matters among soums and ensure and oversee their implementation of Mongolia’s laws.
To ensure that local self-governing bodies are not subject to political influence, Citizens’ Representatives’ Khurals will run their operations on the basis of organizational structures of standing and temporary committees and working groups, instead of political groups.
As the law states, political parties are not entitled to nominate for elections of soums’ local bodies – khural and for other levels of khurals, political parties cannot give any responsibilities to representatives elected from the parties.
