Information Accelerates Crisis Recovery and Development | 1997

The United Nations Information Shop (UN Info Shop) was established by UNDP Mongolia in 1997 and was managed by the UNDP Mongolia Communications Office. Context is everything. At this time, Mongolia was still recovering from the chaotic and turbulent transition from Communism to free markets and democracy begun at the start of the 1990s, called by some "one of the biggest peacetime economic collapses ever" (Mongolia's Economic Reforms: Background, Content and Prospects, Richard Pomfret, University of Adelaide, 1994). There was a thirst for information: access to the Internet was still limited and access to mobile phones was just the preserve of the rich. As a legacy of the past, information, especially that about the outside world and the country’s true economic and social conditions, was restricted. During the years of Communism, even simple travel from one place to the next was strictly regulated. 

While today we can take it for granted that the Internet, and mobile and smart phones, deliver the world’s information in seconds, this just was not the case in the late 1990s in Mongolia. 

The UN Info Shop quickly became a crucial resource for students (many schools and universities were nearby) and it became a first stop for many wishing to access the Internet. It also substantially raised the profile of the UN in the country as the public could, for the first time, enter the UN building and discover what the UN was doing in the country. They could also visit the UNDP Mongolia Communications Office and meet its team. 

P. Dagmidmaa reads the Human Development Report Mongolia 1997 in the UN Info Shop.

An announcement in the Blue Sky Bulletin about the launch of the new journal Cooperation South.

The UNDP Mongolia Communications Office Team 1998 outside the UN Info Shop in the capital, Ulaanbaatar: David South, Bayasgalan and Bayarmaa.Many initiatives grew from the talented and dynamic UNDP Mongolia Communications Office team. Here are links to some of them: 

Ger: Mongolia's First Web Magazine 

Mongolian AIDS Bulletin

UN/UNDP Mongolia Development Web Portal 

Case Study: UN + UNDP Mongolia | 1997-1999

© David South Consulting 2017

One World Youth Conferences: Mongolia | 1998 - 1999

In 1998 and 1999, the United Nations in Mongolia began the six One World Youth Conferences - on children, human rights, population and development, social development, women and development plus a national summit. One World brought together youth from across Mongolia to debate and challenge the country’s decision-makers on how they were meeting Mongolia’s international obligations. 

It drew praise from then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan: “This One World Conference Series is a shining example of Mongolia’s determination to build a more democratic and prosperous future for all its citizens based on human rights, good governance, and a free and fair market economy. … Never should young people have to be protected from government.”

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan | Secretary-General Stresses Obligation of Government to Protect Young People (11 June 1999): http://www.un.org/press/en/1999/19990611.SGSM7027.html

Secretary-General stresses obligation of government to protect young people : ‘never should young people have to be protected from government’, Kofi Annan adds in message to final UN OneWorld Youth Conference, in Mongolia : [statement, 11 June 1999] / [by the Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information] 

United Nations Archives: https://search.archives.un.org/countries-mongolia-2004

Mongolia’s One World UN conferences series’ empowers youth, United Nations Chronicle; New York Vol. 37, Iss. 1,  (2000): 63.

Read media coverage of the One World Youth Conferences here: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vxk6-u-dVAgC&pg=PA188&dq=in+their+own+words+one+world&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjr-5GO5ePWAhUEBMAKHaLOCCYQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=in%20their%20own%20words%20one%20world&f=false

Blue Sky Bulletin Issue 9: The One World Kick-Off!

Blue Sky Bulletin Issue 10: The youth of One World featured on the cover.

The Memorandum of Understanding on Youth: Negotiated with the Government of Mongolia: it led to the One World Youth Conferences. Pictured: National Youth Coordinator Julie Schneiderman.

The Nobel Peace Prize 2001 joint winners.

© David South Consulting 2017

Wild East 17 Years Later | 2000 - 2017

Published in 2000 (ECW Press: Toronto), Wild East: Travels in the New Mongolia is 17 years old. It is also 100 years since the 1917 October Revolution in Russia that began the long experiment of the Soviet Union. Mongolia was the second country after Russia to adopt Communism.

Wild East author and foreign correspondent Jill Lawless.

The world has changed considerably since then; and so has Mongolia. The digital revolution has rolled across the planet, the attacks of 9/11 unleashed a wave of violence and wars, and Mongolia even became the fastest-growing economy in the world a few years ago (2012). But back when this book was researched, Mongolia was just coming out of decades of isolation within the Soviet orbit under Communism, and the country experienced in the 1990s “one of the biggest peacetime economic collapses ever” (Mongolia's Economic Reforms: Background, Content and Prospects, Richard Pomfret, University of Adelaide, 1994). 

"The years 1998 and 1999 have been volatile ones for Mongolia, with revolving door governments, the assassination of a minister, emerging corruption, a banking scandal, in-fighting within the ruling Democratic Coalition, frequent paralysis within the Parliament, and disputes over the Constitution. Economically, the period was unstable and rife with controversies." Mongolia in 1998 and 1999: Past, Present, and Future at the New Millennium by Sheldon R. Severinghaus, Asian Survey, Vol. 40, No. 1, A Survey of Asia in 1999 (Jan. - Feb., 2000), pp. 130-139 (Publisher: University of California)

That collapse made for some crazy times, as Wild East shows. 

Wild East was called one of the top 10 Canadian travel books of 2000 by The Globe and Mail. 

Reviews for Wild East: Travels in the New Mongolia by Jill Lawless:

The Globe and Mail

"Engaging...a revealing and often amusing account of her journeys through a beautiful country awakening from a tumultuous era."

The Georgia Straight, Vancouver

"This readable and reportorial book is the perfect antidote to ... those tiresomely difficult, pointlessly dangerous, and essentially fake expedtions undertaken against the advice of local people who know better."

Toronto Star

"Lawless introduces us to Mongolia's tabloid press, to teenage mineworkers, sharp-eyed young hustlers, nomads whose only possessions are their livestock, Mongolian wrestlers and Mongolian horse races."

Mongolian Buryat Civilisation Bookstore

"Wryly funny and wide-spectrum account of Mongolia's tumultuous rebirthing into the 21st century. Half the population lives in Soviet apartment blocks and watches satellite TV but the other half still eek a living from the exquisite, barren hills while living in nomadic felt tents. Of course, I'd much rather be in the tents... but whatever your preference, you will definitely enjoy Ms. Lawless' writing. She was editor of an Ulaan Baator newspaper for two years, and she tells it like it is. Very highly recommended."

Read a story by Jill in The Guardian (9 June 1999): Letter from Mongolia | Herding instinct 

Copies of Wild East: Travels in the New Mongolia by Jill Lawless are still available in various editions and languages.

A promotional poster for Wild East from 2003.

Canada's Globe and Mail called Wild East: Travels in the New Mongolia an "engaging portrait of modern Mongolia" (November 25, 2000).

The New York Post called Wild East: Travels in the New Mongolia "harrowing, hilarious" (April 26, 2016).

Explore further Jill Lawless' work here: https://muckrack.com/jilllawless

A sample of Jill's travel writing here: https://www.deseret.com/2007/4/8/20011005/dominica-escape-into-nature-on-this-eastern-caribbean-island#a-visitor-bathes-on-secret-beach-near-portsmouth-dominica-reaching-the-remote-spot-requires-a-walk-through-the-woods-followed-by-a-rope-descent-off-of-a-100-foot-cliff-face

UK edition (Summersdale Travel: 2002). Front cover images © David South and Liz Lawless.

© David South Consulting 2017

Update on Monday, April 19, 2021 at 10:00AM by David South

Reviews | Wild East: The New Mongolia

Jill Lawless is a Correspondent with The Associated Press based in London, UK. In 2000, her first book – Wild East: Travels in the New Mongolia – was published by ECW Press. Click through the site to read more about Jill and her book, Wild East: Travels in the New Mongolia.

“One of the top 10 Canadian travel books of 2000.” The Globe and Mail

Published in Canada

• Publisher : ECW Press; Illustrated edition (1 Jan. 2000)
• Language : English
• Paperback : 230 pages
• ISBN-10 : 1550224344
• ISBN-13 : 978-1550224344
• Dimensions : 15.24 x 1.6 x 22.86 cm
•  Images © David South and Liz Lawless.

Media Reviews

“They also offered a reading recommendation, the memoir-cum-travelogue “Wild East,” by Jill Lawless, a Canadian journalist who spent a few years in Mongolia in the mid-’90s, just after seven decades of Soviet Communism fell here. Her harrowing, often hilarious, stories of expat life, which I read on the plane on the way over, surpassed even those of my friends’ holiday.” The New York Post

“Lawless introduces us to Mongolia’s tabloid press, to teenage mineworkers, sharp-eyed young hustlers, nomads whose only possessions are their livestock, Mongolian wrestlers and Mongolian horse races.” Toronto Star

“This readable and reportorial book is the perfect antidote to … those tiresomely difficult, pointlessly dangerous, and essentially fake expeditions undertaken against the advice of local people who know better.” The Georgia Straight, Vancouver

“Wryly funny and wide-spectrum account of Mongolia’s tumultuous rebirthing into the 21st century. Half the population lives in Soviet apartment blocks and watches satellite TV but the other half still eek a living from the exquisite, barren hills while living in nomadic felt tents. Of course, I’d much rather be in the tents… but whatever your preference, you will definitely enjoy Ms. Lawless’ writing. She was editor of an Ulaan Baator newspaper for two years, and she tells it like it is. Very highly recommended.” Mongolian Buryat Civilisation Bookstore

Journal Reviews

“Jill Lawless’ book is not a scholarly tome per se, yet it is of definite value to the contemporary Mongolian scholar … Lawless’ period is 1997-1999, the heart of the tumultuous and ill-spent years of Democratic Coalition Government… a period of great hopes for democratic flowering and free market enterprise leading the nation to prosperity and progress.” Alicia J. Campi in Mongolian Studies

Historical dictionary of Mongolia, by Alan J. K. Sanders, Scarecrow Press, 2003.

---

Wild East: Travels in the New Mongolia recommended by the Embassy of the United States in Mongolia . 
“This is a good, fun book about life in Mongolia. … it’s an interesting and often amusing series of stories loosely connected.”

Reader Reviews

“Others sent me Jill Lawless’s Wild East: The New Mongolia, a compilation of pieces she wrote when she was editor of Mongolia’s English-language newspaper, the UB Post, during Mongolia’s transition from a socialist people’s republic to young democracy. With the wind shaking the frame of my ger, I lit the stove and read what these and other writers claimed to have found just outside my flapping felt walls.

“By the time veteran journalist Jasper Becker’s Mongolia: Travels in an Untamed Land arrived, I had put aside books written since Mongolia opened up to the West in the early 1990s. Most Western travellers and writers discovered the same sights from the back of a borrowed horse. Only Lawless had investigated the place over time on its own terms. The others, full of pith and vinegar and a standard set of assumptions about what they would find, built books on flights of fancy – golfing across Mongolia, following the path of medieval monks, ‘rediscovering shamanism’ – that were flimsier even than those that had set me in motion. The books were as exciting as museum diorama, papier-mâché models of their ‘medieval’ travels and capitalist fantasies.” Three Years in Mongolia: Trying to be a Travel Writer, Luke Meinzen, Kill Your Darlings, 10 April 2012

“I put Becker away and pulled out Wild East by Jill Lawless. She was heaps better than Becker, which wasn’t hard.” MÖRÖN TO MÖRÖN: Two Men, Two Bikes, One Mongolian Misadventure, Tom Doig, Allen & Unwin, 2013

“Wild East is less of a travel memoir, but rather essays and shorter narratives of creative non-fiction … it provides a compelling narrative into the historical moment when Mongolia dropped its isolation and began … its journey toward modernization.” Three Works of Travel Writing to Ignite Your Imagination (while we patiently wait for the pandemic to run its course), November 10, 2020

© David South Consulting 2021

UNDP Clients | 1997 - 2014

UNDP Mongolia Communications Office 

A sample of the many publications developed by the UNDP Mongolia Communications Office between 1997 and 1999. Photographed in our London, UK HQ.

UNDP Mongolia staff photo 1997. I served for two years as the UNDP Mongolia head of communications (1997-1999). I am sitting front row centre left of the UN Resident Coordinator Douglas Gardner.

United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC)

Resulting from the influential UN e-newsletter Development Challenges, South-South Solutions, Southern Innovator magazine published five issues between 2011 and 2014. Designed by Solveig Rolfsdottir in Iceland using 100% renewable energy.

Senior Partner David South at the Sydney Opera House in 2013.

© David South Consulting 2017

Why David South Consulting (DSC)/David South International (DSI)?

How we work is as important as the results we get. In fact, we believe it shapes the result. Get the journey to the goal right, and the goal will be better for it; more substantial, more effective, more long-lasting. We have developed a methodology and way of working that can take complex and complicated mandates and turn them into clear achievements.

Through our case studies, we show how messy, complex and often conflicting mandates are re-shaped into substantial achievements that inspire others. We have done this for large institutions undergoing great stress and transformation (usually in some way brought on by digital change), and for smaller organizations and start-ups. 

Modern organizations are diverse, often under stress, and buffeted by shifting political demands. 

We understand complexity is the norm for any organization working with highly educated professionals seeking to be leaders in their field. If you do not engage them, they leave for greener pastures. 

We listen, we review the mandates and research the data; we get to know the players and stakeholders; and then we act, with the staying power and focus required to get substantial results. It has made many of our past clients’ careers - and money. 

This includes offering strategic support to senior large institution leaders, including high-profile women leaders and senior UN officials and healthcare professionals. 

For example, we have twice helped in making UNDP (the UN’s development agency) relevant to the digital era, adapting to the new way of doing things, in particular how young people can be better engaged. We have worked in a major crisis in Asia, during rapid transformation to the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) (being called a “role model”), and with a wide range of clients, from youth media start-ups to a prestigious academic research institute. 

Quick to spot trends and consistently viewing them from a human development perspective (UNDP’s development methodology, which is championed every year in its global and national human development reports), DSC/DSI was able to build a respected profile and brand for the United Nations, while drawing others into the innovation and South-South space, making it ‘cool’.

When this work had started at the end of 2006, there was very little coverage online and in the media of the quiet solutions revolution in the global South; today there are many services, media outlets and websites covering stories on the global South and innovation. Examples include The Guardian, SciDev, Devex, Planet Earth Institute, Quartz, etc. And the innovation message has been picked up by governments around the world. 

While consulting for UN missions in the early to mid-2000s, we had noticed a disconnect between how development was being done and what was happening in information and mobile technology and its potential. 

As far back as the late 1990s in Mongolia (then embroiled in a major crisis), DSC/DSI was able to leverage the emerging Internet and information technologies to address the crisis response. Called a “role model” for other UN missions in a global UN assessment, this work inspired the wider UN to alter its approach to these new technologies and capabilities.

During several years of working as a consultant in various UN missions around the world, we also noticed further disconnects. The rapid take-up of mobile phones being the most important. This had gone on quietly but it was revolutionary in what it could do for development. In fact, it was clear there was a quiet revolution happening in how people solved problems and dealt with the problems in their lives and it had little to do with ‘high-level’ declarations or elaborate plans. Instead, people were adapting these new technologies and potentialities to solve their problems organically: how to make money, how to support their families, how to get an education and learn, how to live in the rapidly urbanising world of their lived experience.

In 2007 we were hired by the UN’s then-Special Unit for South-South Cooperation (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) to document this quiet revolution and champion its innovators and pioneers.    

© David South Consulting 2017