Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to host Russian President Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, Pakistan’s Shehbaz Sharif and other leaders at the virtual Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit on Tuesday.
The SCO summit under India’s presidency will focus on regional security and boosting connectivity and trade among the member nations.
The summit’s theme is “Towards a SECURE SCO’. The SECURE acronym was coined by PM Modi at the 2018 SCO summit and it stands for Security; Economy and Trade; Connectivity; Unity; Respect for Sovereignty and Territorial Integrity; and Environment.
Why is the SCO summit significant this year?
This year’s SCO summit, will be Putin’s first participation in a multilateral summit after the Wagner Mercenary group launched an armed rebellion on Moscow last week.
This summit will also welcome Iran as the new permanent member of the grouping.
The situation in Afghanistan, the Ukraine conflict and enhancing cooperation among the SCO member countries are expected to figure in the summit, people familiar with the matter said, adding boosting connectivity and trade is also likely to be discussed.
The summit also comes at the backdrop of the over three-year eastern Ladakh border standoff between India and China, and two weeks after PM Modi’s visit to US.
What is the SCO?
The SCO is an influential economic and security bloc comprising of India, China, Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
It has slowly emerged as one of the largest transregional international organisations.
Other attendees of the summit
Heads of six international and regional organisations have also been invited to the summit.
The organisations are the UN, the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States), CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organisation), EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union) and CICA (Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia).
India’s presidency of the SCO
India assumed the rotating chairmanship of the SCO at the Samarkand Summit of SCO on September 16 2022.
India’s presidency of the SCO saw significant activities in a number of areas. New Delhi created five new pillars for cooperation in SCO. These are startups and innovation, traditional medicine, digital inclusion, youth empowerment and shared Buddhist heritage
To further Prime Minister Modi’s vision of Vasudhaiv Kutumbakom (world is one family), India emphasised on building greater people-to-people connect, the person said.
India and SCO
India’s association with SCO began in 2005 as an Observer country. India became a full Member State of SCO at the Astana Summit in 2017 which was a historic moment in India’s enagement with the Organisation.
In the past six years, India has played a very active and constructive role in all spheres of activities of SCO.
SCO meet in Goa
In May this year, India hosted the Foreign Ministers of SCO in Goa, and it was marked by a colourful cultural program and substantive discussions the following day.
EAM inaugurated New Delhi Hall virtually at the SCO Secretariat in Beijing during India’s presidency of SCO. A commemorative stamp was released to mark the first ever SCO presidency of India.
With PTI inputs
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