The Kazakhstan capital, Astana, takes center stage for international diplomacy as it hosts the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit on 3-4 July. Themed “Strengthening Multilateral Dialogue – Striving for Sustainable Peace and Development,” the summit will see participation from SCO heads of state alongside leaders from Azerbaijan, Türkiye, Qatar, Mongolia, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkmenistan. Heads and representatives from various international organizations will also be present.
“A meeting in the SCO+ format will be held on July 4. This format will be for the first time, previously all the invited countries were represented at an expanded SCO meeting, and now a new format has been officially announced,” said Yury Ushakov, Russian presidential foreign policy aide (RIA Novosti).
According to him, the inaugural “SCO+” meeting will gather leaders from Azerbaijan, Qatar, Mongolia, Türkiye, the ruler of Ras al Khaimah (UAE).
The topic of the upcoming meeting is strengthening multilateral dialogue, striving for sustainable peace and development, “that is, issues of SCO cooperation with invited countries on international and regional topics will be mainly considered”, Ushakov told.
The summit will be graced by representatives from prominent international organizations, including the UN Secretary-General, the CSTO Secretary-General, the CIS Executive Secretary, the head of the Eurasian Economic Commission, the Islamic Organization for Food Security, the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA), and the Economic Cooperation Organization.
One of the expected outcomes of the summit is Belarus’s accession as a full member of the SCO.
The summit’s agenda includes discussing and adopting various documents and initiatives, such as:
• Program of cooperation to combat terrorism, separatism, and extremism
• SCO Anti-Drug Strategy
• Astana Declaration of the SCO Heads of State
• SCO Initiative “On World Unity for Just Peace and Harmony”
• Roadmap for developing cooperation with SCO dialogue partners, and more.
Following the summit, Kazakhstan will hand over the SCO chairmanship to China for the 2024-2025 period. China previously held the chairmanship seven years ago.
Currently, the SCO comprises nine member states: India, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Three countries have observer status: Afghanistan, Belarus, and Mongolia. Fourteen countries are SCO Dialogue Partners: Azerbaijan, Armenia, Bahrain, Egypt, Cambodia, Qatar, Kuwait, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Sri Lanka.