News: India will host the 19th council of heads of government of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)
Facts:
About Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)
- The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is a permanent intergovernmental international organisation
- It was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
- The Secretariat of SCO is based in Beijing, China.
Members:
- The members of the SCO are China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. India and Pakistan were admitted to the SCO as permanent members in 2017.
- The SCO has four observer states, Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia.
- It has six dialogue partners, namely Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cambodia, Nepal, Turkey and Sri Lanka.
Goals:
- strengthening mutual trust and neighbourliness among the member states;
- promoting their effective cooperation in politics, trade, the economy, research, technology and culture, as well as in education, energy, transport, tourism, environmental protection,
- making joint efforts to maintain and ensure peace, security and stability in the region;
- Moving towards the establishment of a democratic, fair and rational new international political and economic order.
Organizational Structure:
- The Heads of State Council (HSC) is the supreme decision-making body in the SCO. It meets once a year and adopts decisions and guidelines on all important matters of the organisation.
- The SCO Heads of Government Council (HGC) meets once a year to discuss the organisation’s multilateral cooperation strategy and priority areas, to resolve current important economic and other cooperation issues. It also approves the organisation’s annual budget.
- SCO has two permanent bodies —
- SCO Secretariat based in Beijing, China and
- Executive Committee of the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. RATS serves to promote cooperation of member states against the terrorism, separatism and extremism.
SCO Summits: The SCO holds two summits every year: Summit of Heads of States and Summits Heads of Governments. The summits are held in member states.
