IMPOVERISHED MONGOLIAN BOYS WAIT AT EDUCATION CAMP NEAR GACHUURT, 2000-07-01 (photo)

Mongolian street kids, who left their families due to poverty and domestic violence, wait at an education camp run by the Save the Children Fund near Gachuurt, about 40kms east of capital Ulan Bator, June 30. The poverty rates of Mongolia had more than doubled since 1991. Mongolians are preparing to vote on Sunday in an election which may bring their former Communist rulers back to power after a decade of democracy. The opposition Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP), who ruled for 75 years until the last election in 1996, are in the lead in the polls, capitalising on widespread disillusion with the ruling Democratic Coalition after four cabinet resignations and a series of corruption scandal. ASW/CC