The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was established as a multilateral association to ensure security and maintain stability across the vast Eurasian region, join forces to counteract emerging challenges and threats, and enhance trade, as well as cultural and humanitarian cooperation.
By reinforcing mutually beneficial cooperation, preventing confrontation and conflict, and maintaining equal and indivisible security, SCO aims to build a just polycentric world order, in full conformity with the norms of international law and principles of mutual respect, which meets the interests of each and every State, taking into account their mutual needs and aspirations. As a multinational and multicultural organization, SCO strives to stave off the clash of civilizations across its respective regions.
Adhering to the principles of openness, SCO does not intend to form any alliances or direct its actions against any sovereign entity. It actively and consistently pursues dialogue, exchanges and cooperation, and stands for strict observance of the purposes and principles inscribed in the Charter of the United Nations, such as equality and sovereignty of States, inadmissibility of intervention in their domestic affairs, respect for territorial integrity, inviolability of borders, non-aggression, peaceful settlement of disputes, non-use of force or threat of force, as well as other universally recognized norms of international law, aimed at maintaining peace and security, establishing partnerships between States, protecting national sovereignty and respecting the right to determine one’s own destiny and path forward for political, socioeconomic and cultural development.
The entire structure of the organization is designed to generate multilateral partnerships to assist sovereign members in coordinating strategies and approaches to solving pressing international issues and meeting regional needs. It also provides an opportunity for member States to concentrate their efforts on common goals in accordance with the principles of voluntary cooperation and equitable distribution of responsibilities.
SCO Expansion – the Organization’s Capacity-building
The historic summit of SCO heads of member States in Astana, Kazakhstan, on 8-9 June 2017 launched a new stage in the organization’s development. One of its principle outcomes was the granting of full SCO membership to India and Pakistan. The accession of these two powerful and influential South Asian States has allowed the SCO to strengthen its capacity and expand the spectrum of its opportunities, including in the sphere of combating existing and emerging challenges and threats.
The vast region comprising SCO member States—stretching north to south from the Arctic to the Indian Ocean, and east to west from Lianyungang in China to Kaliningrad in the Russian Federation—home to almost 44 per cent of the world’s population, poses the fundamental task of collectively maintaining stability and effectively counteracting security threats across our respective territories, the responsibility of what is currently the largest regional organization on Earth.
By consolidating four nuclear powers—half of the world’s nuclear States—into a single regional organization, SCO serves as an additional deterrent within the system established to maintain the world’s strategic balance of power and political stability.
In addition to agreements of SCO member States on key issues on the regional and global agendas, the text of the Astana Declaration of the Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is an outcome document of the Astana summit, outlines further steps the organization will take against threats to international peace and security.
Approaches and Practical Steps towards Security and Stability
Adhering to the strict observance of universally recognized norms of international law, as well as to the relentless pursuit of the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter, SCO is unshaken in its belief that as a means of conflict resolution diplomacy is unmatched. In this regard, SCO continues its support for an even more prominent coordinating role for the United Nations in international relations, with an emphasis upon the further development of close cooperation with the world Organization.
A number of special initiatives launched under the auspices of the United Nations and SCO have noticeably contributed to the enhancement of international cooperation in combating common challenges and threats to security. A case in point is the outcome of the High-level Special Event on “The United Nations and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Jointly Countering Challenges and Threats”, held in November 2016 in New York, as well as the high-level side event on “The United Nations and Shanghai Cooperation Organization in the Fight Against Drugs: Common Threats and Joint Actions”, held in collaboration with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in March 2017 in Vienna.
SCO will continue to make coordinated efforts to combat common challenges and threats to security, broaden dialogue and reinforce collaboration in ensuring comprehensive security by countering terrorism, cyberterrorism, separatism, extremism, transnational organized crime, and illicit drug trafficking, as well as reinforcing international information security and emergency response.
In this regard, SCO intends to further develop its core permanent body—the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS). Data clearly illustrates to what extent RATS has been effective in its efforts. Between 2011 and 2015, under RATS coordination, the authorities of SCO member States managed to prevent 20 terrorist attacks while still in the planning stages, averted 650 crimes of terrorist and extremist nature, and neutralized 440 terrorist training camps and 1,700 members of international terrorist organizations. More than 2,700 members of illicit armed groups, their accomplices, and persons suspected in criminal activity were arrested, while 213 people associated with terrorist or extremist organizations were extradited, with many sentenced to long terms of imprisonment; 180 suspects were placed on wanted lists, 600 undercover bases with weaponry were revealed, and more than 3,250 improvised explosive devices were confiscated, along with 10,000 weapons, approximately 450,000 pieces of ammunition, and more than 52 tons of explosives.
The SCO common response to the steadily growing threat of extremism is the SCO Convention on Countering Extremism, adopted at the summit in Astana. This document will strengthen the international legal framework for countering emerging challenges and threats along with the Shanghai Convention on Combating Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism, the Convention of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization against Terrorism, and the 2016-2018 SCO Member States Programme on Cooperation in Combating Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism, as well as core United Nations instruments, such as the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy and relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions. The SCO Convention on Countering Extremism is aimed at advancing security, increasing effective cooperation between authorities and improving the legal framework in this sphere.
An upsurge in terrorist activities in various parts of the world requires the development and improvement of existing methods and techniques applied to our common fight against this evil. The Statement by the SCO Heads of the Member States on Joint Counteraction to International Terrorism issued in Astana is an important political instrument that includes an assessment of the state of affairs, approaches to consolidating joint forces in our fight against terrorism, and our call to the international community to unite within a broadly-based international anti-terrorist coalition to combat this severe global threat.