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Box 5.6 Gold Rush in Mongolia: from Herders to ‘Ninjas’Harsh winters in Mongolia have been forcing traditionalherder families to eke out a living as informal miners.Workers laid off from formal mining sites were the firstto mine informally. From the green plastic containersthey wear on their backs in turtle style, they are knownas ‘ninjas’. An estimated 100,000 men, women andchildren engage in informal mining (the entire populationis only 2.7 million), producing the same level as formalmining companies. Exposure to mercury used to extractgold from the ore puts the miners, especially the children,at serious risk.The Mongolian Employers Federation (MONEF) has beenseeking a new law to govern informal mining. At the sametime, it has been raising awareness among the miningcompanies and providing chances for children of miningfamilies to receive education and training. Tripartitenegotiations (involving government, and employers’ andworkers’ representatives) agreed on changes to labour legislationthat would extend its reach to those in the informaleconomy and improve protection against the worst formsof child labour. So far, however, these initiatives have notbeen enacted into law.Such measures would help to fill a legislative gap thatemerged at the time of privatisation of mining in the1990s. Legislation on mining minerals and the peoplewho mine them provides an opportunity for coherencebetween policies on natural resource use, investment,property ownership, job creation for adults and labourprotection.Source: Damdinjav Narmandakh, ‘Extending labour protection to theinformal economy in Mongolia,’ in David Tajgman, ed., ExtendingLabour Law to All Workers: Promoting Decent Work in the InformalEconomy in Cambodia, Thailand and Mongolia (ILO, Bangkok, 2006),pp 105-153; ‘Gold rush in Mongolia: When shepherds become‘ninjas’.’ ILO: About the ILO, 2 Sept. 2005.opportunities and protections. For example, thelegal protection prohibiting children from engagingin the worst forms of child labour (that can stunttheir growth and condemn them to a life of povertyas unskilled workers) needs to be accompanied byopportunities to attend school and acquire marketableskills.Similarly, the exercise of freedom of associationgoes hand in hand with legal protections thatpermit easy registration of trade unions, smallemployers, cooperatives and small traders’ associations,whether they are in the formal or informaleconomies. The security/protection dimension hasobvious relevance in relation to protecting workers’health and ensuring a social floor that keeps themfrom falling back into poverty when a family healthemergency strikes. For example, the Zambian Congressof Trade Unions and the Alliance for ZambiaInformal Economy Associations launched a partnershipin 2002. (Another illustration from Mongoliais presented in Box 5.6.) Moreover, the ability toachieve decent work for all will be conditioned bythe job-creating or job-destroying effects of internationaland national macroeconomic policies, sothis dimension would need to be captured as wellTable 5.8 shows how labour rights can be mappedwith the protection and security available in variouslegal and other instruments and with the opportunitiesand protections implicit in the Legal Empowermentof the Poor agenda.Establishing entrepreneurial rights also impliesa broad policy reform agenda (Table 5.9). Withinthe mandate of the Commission, the major issuesfor poor business people include lack of recognitionand vulnerability, lack of credit and capital,absence of social security, lack of protection oflabour and of assets, and institutional barriers tothe formal economy such as complicated procedures(entry/exit, expansion of business contracts,conflict resolution). There would be a possiblespectrum from the street hawker or fisher without320