The ILO-led UN Joint Programme “Extending Social Protection to Herders with Enhanced Shock Responsiveness” has selected Zavkhan, Gobi-Altai, Uvs, Khovd, and Bayan-Ulgii provinces as target locations for its goal of increasing social insurance coverage of herders. As part of the project, soum social insurance officers from these provinces have been reaching out to herders and raising their awareness on social protection since September 2020 with an aim of increasing their social insurance coverage.

To support this activity and make information accessible to more herders, the project has developed a handbook that contains comprehensive information about social protection. The handbook consists of three main topics - social insurance for herders, herders’ cooperatives, sustainable livestock husbandry – illustrated through infographics.

Soum social insurance officers from the targeted 5 provinces have been saying that the handbook has been helpful in their effort to raise herders’ awareness on social protection. In addition, herders have also been sharing their experiences with the handbook, saying they found the topics useful and the handbook easy to understand. So far, the handbook has been distributed to 11,000 herders.