After two years after the COVID-19 epidemic, the 22nd Summit of the Council of Heads of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Member States (SCO-CoHS) is scheduled to begin on Thursday in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
The event would mark the first SCO-CoHS Summit in person since the last one, which was held in June 2019 in Bishkek before the Covid epidemic swept the world. The two summits that followed, under the presidency of Russia and Tajikistan, were conducted virtually. The meeting would be attended by the heads of SCO Member States, Observer States, the SCO Secretary General, the SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) Executive Director, the President of Turkmenistan, and other invited guests.
Since the SCO summit is its first gathering in two years owing to the COVID epidemic, the leaders of the member nations will meet in private on the fringes of the conference. The leaders are anticipated to address the current and future of multilateral cooperation and the organization’s efforts during the last 20 years. At the summit, regional and international hot topics are also anticipated to be covered.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend the meeting today and tomorrow. On the fringes of the SCO conference in Samarkand, he is anticipated to meet privately with Presidents of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin and the Islamic Republic of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev.
During the SCO meeting, PM Modi and the Russian President will talk about Russian-Indian cooperation inside the UN and G20.
The Prime Minister will also have additional bilateral discussions during the summit, which gets underway in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on September 14.
The conference is also anticipated to include the participation of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Uzbekistan currently holds the SCO 2022 chair. The SCO’s next chair will be India.
Currently, the SCO consists of eight Member States (China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan), four Observer States (Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia) that are interested in obtaining full membership, and six “Dialogue Partners” (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Turkey).
SCO offers promise in a number of fresh industries where all the member nations may discover shared interests. India has already made significant efforts to promote collaboration in traditional medicine, science and technology, and startups and innovation.
India has made serious efforts to promote peace, prosperity, and stability throughout the whole Eurasian area in general and among the SCO members in particular since the time of its full membership.
The SCO gives India the chance to launch multilateral and regional counterterrorism activities as well as deal with the illegal drug trade, which is currently being utilised by its neighbours to do societal harm and target India’s young.
Uzbekistan currently holds the SCO 2022 chair. The SCO’s next chair will be India.
The Shanghai Five, which was established in 1996, evolved into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in 2001 when Uzbekistan was included. With the addition of India and Pakistan in 2017 and the choice to accept Tehran as a full member in 2021, the SCO grew to become one of the biggest multilateral organisations, representing close to 30% of the global GDP and 40% of the world’s population.
