Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a Platform for Regional Understanding: Its Economic, Political and Security Potential

Year 2016, Volume: 21 Issue: 1, 83 - 100, 01.04.2016

Syed Farooq Hasnat Zamurrad Awan

Abstract

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization SCO is one of the newest, multi-purpose regional organizations, with an agenda that ranges from broader security concerns to economic cooperation. The founding members of this organization are China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, known as the “Shanghai Five”. It was on June 15, 2001 that these five regional countries, along with Uzbekistan, signed the Shanghai Convention for combating terrorism, extremism, and separatism--sometimes referred to as ‘the three evils’. The SCO is a combination of permanent, observer members and dialogue partners, each having divergent interests. The most recent July 2015 significant enhancement to the SCO was the final agreement to include Pakistan and India as permanent members. It has yet to be measured whether this grouping of nations revolves more around mere rhetoric and goodwill meetings or whether the understanding can be translated into meaningful and concrete deliberations

Keywords

Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Central Asia, China, Russia, Pakistan, India.

References

• Pacific Community (1947); Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS), 1951; Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), 1967; Pacific Islands Forum, 1971; Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), 1982; South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC), 1985; Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), 1989; Conference on Interaction and Confidence-building measures in Asia (CICA), 1992; ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), 1994; ASEAN Plus Three (APT), 1997; Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), 2001.
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