The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was established in 2001 to strengthen security cooperation among its member countries. It has now evolved into a diversified structure of “four communities”: health, security, development, and culture.

Mutually beneficial cooperation between the SCO member countries is constantly enhancing, and the organization’s influence in the international arena is steadily growing. Guided by the “Shanghai Spirit”, characterized by mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for the diversity of civilizations, and the pursuit of common development, the SCO has embarked on the path to achieving mutual benefit and shared prosperity, and has achieved great success in business cooperation in various fields and has made positive contributions to help build a community with a shared destiny for humanity.

Strengthening security cooperation, maintaining security and stability in the region

Jointly maintaining stability and effectively countering threats to regional security are essential responsibilities of the SCO. The “Shanghai Spirit”, the New Security Concept and the Security Community Concept not only provide theoretical guidance for regional security cooperation, but also contribute to promoting a more just and rational international order.

The legal basis for cooperation between SCO member countries in security is gradually being strengthened. Over the past twenty years of development, the organization’s member states have signed several security cooperation documents. A comprehensive legal system was formed to combat the “three forces of evil” – terrorism, separatism, and extremism – which provides a solid legal basis for the joint struggle of the SCO member states against these “forces”.

Cooperation mechanisms are constantly being improved. Within the framework of the SCO, cooperation mechanisms were created at different levels with the participation of relevant departments, including a meeting of secretaries of the Security Councils, a meeting of the chairmen of the Supreme Courts, a meeting of prosecutors general, a meeting of defense ministers, a meeting of the chiefs of general staff of the armed forces, a meeting of heads of anti-drug agencies and a meeting of heads of border agencies. The creation of these mechanisms has reduced institutional barriers to cooperation among the organization’s member countries and facilitated consultation on security issues and intelligence sharing. In June 2004, the SCO’s Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure (RATS) was officially established.

The SCO member countries have launched practical cooperation in capacity-building, intelligence exchange, deradicalization, and the fight against cyberterrorism. Thanks to these efforts, the security situation in the SCO member states is under control and has improved particularly noticeably in the Central Asian countries.

The SCO countries are strengthening anti-drug cooperation, jointly fighting transnational organized crime, attaching great importance to contacts between judicial departments and personnel training, and paying attention to new issues such as biological and information security. Active efforts are being made to promote national reconciliation and reconstruction in Afghanistan.

Security cooperation has created favorable conditions for the social and economic development of the organization’s member countries.

“Today the SCO is one of the foundations of the emerging multipolar world order, based on the UN Charter; on the philosophy of equal, indivisible security; the rights of peoples to decide their destinies”, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergei Lavrov said.

UzA