UN expert to visit Mongolia to assess situation of human rights defenders www.ohchr.org

GENEVA (26 April 2019) – The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Michel Forst, will undertake his first official visit to Mongolia from 30 April to 13 May 2019.

"As the Government of Mongolia is considering a draft law to protect human rights defenders, my visit is particularly timely," said the UN expert. "I look forward to fruitful discussions with executive representatives, as well as officials from the legislative and judicial branches.

"I will also meet with human rights defenders to understand the situation they face in Mongolia and to explore how my mandate can better support their work." 
Highlighting the recently adopted Human Rights Council’s resolution which recognises the key role played by human rights defenders in the protection of the environment, the Special Rapporteur said that his visit would also allow him to look into the specific situation of environmental human rights defenders.

"During my visit, I intend to analyse how the government of Mongolia is ensuring that people and communities can safely promote and defend human rights and the environment," said Forst. "This seems particularly important in a country where the population has historically always lived in harmony with nature, but is now facing rapid industrial growth, urbanisation, mining and other extractive activities that impact on their rights."

During his two-week visit, at the invitation of the Government, the human rights expert will meet Government officials, human rights defenders and representatives of civil society, and the business sector, in Ulaanbaatar areas and Dornogovi aimag.

Forst will present his preliminary observations on the visit at a press conference on Monday 13 May 2019, at 11 am local time, in the UN Auditorium, UN House, UN Street-14, Sukhbaatar District, Ulaanbaatar. Access will be strictly limited to journalists.

The Special Rapporteur will present a comprehensive report of this visit to the UN Human Rights Council in March 2020.

ENDS

Mr. Michel Forst (France) was appointed by the Human Rights Council as the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders in 2014. Mr. Forst has extensive experience of human rights issues and specifically of the situation of human rights defenders. He was the Director General of Amnesty International (France) and Secretary General of the first World Summit on Human Rights Defenders in 1998. He is a former UN Independent Expert on the human rights situation in Haiti.

The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.

UN Human Rights, Country Page: Mongolia

The Special Rapporteur is mandated to conduct official visits to States on their invitation. These visits provide an opportunity to examine in detail the role and situation of human rights defenders in the country, to identify particular problems and to make recommendations on how these could be resolved. By the nature of the mandate, the Special Rapporteur is required to look critically at the situation of human rights defenders in a country. Nevertheless, the process is intended to provide an independent and impartial assessment which will be of use to all actors in strengthening both the contribution of defenders to human rights and their protection.

Issues raised during such visits include: violations committed against human rights defenders; challenges to the "environment" within which defenders conduct their human rights work, including freedoms of association and expression, access to funding and the support to defenders provided by domestic legislation; and efforts undertaken by the authorities to protect human rights defenders from violations.

A few months after each visit, the Special Rapporteur issues a report on the visit indicating, among other things, main concerns and recommendations for action. The report is then formally presented by the Special Rapporteur at the Human Rights Council.

For additional information, please contact: Thibaut Guillet (+41 22 917 9158 / +41 22 79 752 0486 / tguillet@ohchr.org)

For media inquiries related to other UN independent experts: Jeremy Laurence (+ 41 22 917 9383 / jlaurence@ohchr.org)

Cooperation agreements signed between Mongolian and Chinese companies www.montsame.mn

Beijing /MONTSAME/ Within the framework of the President’s state visit to the People’s Republic of China, private entities of Mongolia and China signed following agreements.

$13.6B record-breaking solar park rises from Dubai desert www.cnn.com

Under the Arabian sun, a monumental construction effort is making headway. Located deep within Dubai's desert interior, the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park -- named after the emirate's ruler and the UAE's vice president and prime minister -- continues to grow and has just passed another milestone.
In its eighth year of development, satellite images give a sense of scale already: miles of photovoltaics arranged along neat east-west lines, their uniformity at odds with the creases and crinkles of the sands surrounding the energy plant. Once finished, Dubai Energy and Water Authority (DEWA) told CNN the 50 billion-dirham ($13.6 billion) investment could power as many as 1.3 million homes, reducing carbon emissions by 6.5 million tonnes annually.
First announced in 2012 and with a scheduled completion date of 2030, the 5,000-megawatt solar park will take three times as long to finish as the Burj Khalifa. Phases one and two, which are already complete, comprised 2.3 million photovoltaic panels with a capacity of 213 megawatts. Phase three, deep in construction, adds over 3 million photovoltaics and another 800 megawatts, and will be completed in 2020, say DEWA.
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But after years of spreading out across the desert floor, the solar project is now rising upward with phase four -- perhaps the most ambitious development yet.
After breaking ground in March 2018, the base is now complete for what DEWA claims will be the tallest concentrated solar power (CSP) tower in the world.
It will use mirrors called heliostats to focus sunlight at the top of the tower, in order to heat up a flow of molten salts. The heat is used to power steam turbines, generating electricity.

"Typically, CSP will have efficiencies which are slightly higher than photovoltaics (PVs)," Christos Markides, professor of clean energy technologies at Imperial College London, told CNN. CSP stores energy as heat rather than in batteries. "Thermal energy storage is something like 10-times cheaper than electrical energy storage," he explained. "That gives that particular technology an advantage."
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Practically speaking, it means CSP can continue to create electricity even without the sun and well into the night. Dubai's tower can store heat for 15 hours and will be able to provide power 24 hours a day, said DEWA. The CSP tower will top out at 260 meters (853 feet) when completed, DEWA added, and will be surrounded by 70,000 heliostats.

In addition to the 100-megwatt CSP tower, phase four will supply another 850 megawatts of power via parabolic troughs (another form of CSP) and photovoltaics. It was recently announced that phase five's 900 megawatts of photovoltaics will be commissioned in stages starting 2021, while remaining installations to bring the park up to its end goal of 5,000 megawatts are still in planning.
With a capacity of 1,963 megawatts, phases one to four alone put the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park high on the list of largest-capacity solar parks in development around the world. The Ladakh Solar Farm in India will produce 3,000 megawatts when operational in 2023, per the World Economic Forum. At the time of writing, the 1,547-megawatt Tengger Desert Solar Park in Ningxia, China is considered the largest operating photovoltaic park in the world.

But building to these colossal proportions is only part of the battle. Resilience -- combating hostile climates and the ravages of time -- is also key.
$5 billion Dubai megaresort rises from The World
"Dust remains a significant challenge," DEWA told CNN via email, "as dust accumulation on modules can substantially reduce the power generation of those modules." The government department said as well as studying panel coating technologies it is implementing "a dry robotic cleaning system to clean the whole plant in a very short time."
Markides also said temperature is an important factor: "(Photovoltaics) degrade faster if the temperatures swing wildly between, say, very cold and very hot -- and they also degrade if the temperatures particularly become very hot." In Dubai, summer temperatures can move from the high-40s Celsius in the day to mid-teens at night.
The Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050 is working towards generating 25% of its energy output from clean sources by 2030, and 75% by 2050 -- equivalent to a capacity of 42,000 megawatts.

Belt and Road to make Russia-China trade more balanced – experts to RT www.rt.com

Russia and China complement one another economically, according to political scientist Joseph Cheng. He said the two countries’ trade could become even more balanced with the help of the Belt & Road Initiative.
Speaking to RT ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s arrival to Beijing on Thursday, he said that Russia’s role is very important, particularly due to its significant natural resources.

Former Spymaster held over ‘Torture to Confess’ scandal www.news.mn

The Chingeltei District Court decided (25 April) to extend the detention of B.Khurts, the controversial former director of Mongolian’s General Intelligence Agency (GIA) for 15 days at the request of the prosecutors. He has been detained by the Criminal Police Department over the ‘torture to confess’ case. B.Khurts was taken to the 461st Detention Centre on 23 April. While in custody, he refused to give a statement without formal approval of D.Gerel, the current director of GIA.

Exporting to Mongolia after EU Exit www.gov.uk

Guidance explaining changes for UK exporters to Mongolia if we leave the EU with no deal.

U.S. and Mongolia Hold Bilateral Consular Engagement www.state.gov

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Visa Services Edward Ramotowski hosted a bilateral consular discussion with the Government of Mongolia, represented by State Secretary D. Davaasuren and Director General of the Department of Consular Affairs L. Munkhtushig. The engagement advanced issues of mutual interest and served to highlight the successes of the #TravelResponsibly consular outreach campaign, an ongoing collaboration between the Mongolian government and the U.S. Embassy in Ulaanbaatar. We look forward to continued cooperation and progress towards shared goals of facilitating responsible travel and protecting our citizens abroad.

Xi: Boost ties with Mongolia www,chinadaily.com.cn

China and Mongolia should enhance strategic communication and respect each other's core interests and major concerns, President Xi Jinping said on Thursday.

Russia, Mongolia should realize full potential for military-technical cooperation - Shoigu www.interfax.com

MOSCOW. April 24 (Interfax) - Moscow is ready to deepen military-technical cooperation with Ulaanbaatar, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said.

Sirens blare in major training on disaster response in Mongolia's capital www.xinhuanet.com

ULAN BATOR, April 25 (Xinhua) -- Emergency sirens blared across Mongolia's capital on Thursday morning and thousands of people gathered at over 100 temporary gathering sites to join a major training on disaster preparedness and response based on a scenario in which a powerful earthquake strikes.