The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit with the subject “Secure” will be held on July 4, 2023, under the leadership of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The word “Secure” serves as an abbreviation for the SCO’s priorities under India’s Presidency, which are “Security, Economy and Trade, Connectivity, Unity, Respect for Sovereignty and Territorial Integrity, and Environment.” The Chair, New Delhi, declared on May 30 that it would host the 23rd Meeting of the SCO, Council of Heads of State (CHS) in a virtual setting after holding over 134 meetings in person. The summit has extended invitations to all seven of the other SCO members: China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. As Observer States, Iran, Belarus, and Mongolia have also been invited. According to SCO tradition, Turkmenistan, the only nation in Central Asia that is not a member, has also been invited. Both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping will attend the summit and address the heads of state. Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister of Pakistan, will take part at PM Modi’s invitation. Afghanistan was granted observer status at the SCO summit in Beijing in 2012, but so far Afghan delegates have not attended SCO meetings because the Taliban administration has not yet earned diplomatic recognition.

Despite being planned as a Eurasian construct, this multilateral framework is now the largest regional organisation in the world in terms of geographic reach and population, with a combined GDP of almost 20% of the global GDP, thanks to the addition of India and Pakistan as member nations. This strong multilateral Asian organisation has four nuclear-armed nations.

But the forthcoming summit in New Delhi will be significant because Iran, a SCO observer state, will be promoted to full membership. Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and SCO Secretary-General Zhang Ming signed a memorandum outlining Tehran’s commitments to becoming a SCO member state on the fringes of the SCO Summit in Samarkand on September 15, 2022. Iran’s Ebrahim Raisi received the Zhang Ming earlier this year in Tehran and praised the SCO for being the greatest regional international institution in the world and for contributing significantly to sustaining regional and global security and stability.

The Republic of Belarus has begun the accession process, and Saudi Arabia has been given the position of dialogue partner. Bahrain is in the process of becoming a conversation partner.Memoranda giving Kuwait, the Maldives, Myanmar, and the United Arab Emirates dialogue partner status were signed at the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in Goa. Turkey and other nations are also interested in joining.

In fact, there has been a lot of action lately on SCO. In the presence of SCO Member State ambassadors, observers, and dialogue partners, India, the current chair, celebrated SCO Day on June 15 by distributing a postage stamp.

The Shanghai Five, which was founded initially to combat terrorism, separatism, and extremism (the “3T”) in the Eurasian region, changed its name to the “Shanghai Cooperation Organisation” in 2001, which resulted in a broader agenda and increased membership. The SCO leaders are “representatives of half of humanity,” former president of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev reportedly said at the Astana Summit in July 2005. Co-founded by Russia and China in 1996, the organization’s goals were border stability, counterterrorism collaboration, reciprocal economic connections, military cooperation, and collaborative intelligence sharing. The three main pillars of the SCO charter are economic integration, people-to-people exchange, and humanitarianism. The SCO’s expansive charter has led to synergy in a variety of domains, including trade, scientific development, culture, education, energy transportation, environmental protection, and other areas.

Aside from its growing membership, the SCO is concentrating its cooperation on trade and finance rather than just security matters. China has been in favour of creating a SCO development bank. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang stated that pursuing an FTA within the organisation will “help to remove trade barriers” while expressing China’s interest in doing so during the Astana summit. They impede national and global economic development.

When Pakistan and India joined the SCO in 2017, the probability that their rivalry would have a detrimental effect on the organization’s operations was brought to light. Despite this, data suggests that the SCO is the only platform where India and Pakistan have had fruitful interactions. When the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers met in Goa in early May, Pakistan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Bilawal Bhutto Zardari stated that his choice to attend the conference underscores Pakistan’s strong commitment to the SCO charter. However, the interaction will only be superficial as long as legitimate worries about security dangers related to terrorism in India and the expansion of Chinese investments persist.  India has used diplomatic means to prevent the CPEC from being built in Gilgit-Baltistan.

Concerns have been raised about China’s intentions to promote the SCO, which boasts open commerce and connectivity across the area. There is a perception that China is taking on more and more leadership roles within the SCO.  Long-standing allies Russia and India may be able to counteract some of China’s goals due to their shared interests.

The SCO will ultimately need to address the situation in Afghanistan as well. The return of the Taliban to power in Kabul will have an immediate effect on the six nations that border Afghanistan. Of these, five are SCO members. One of the largest security issues for the SCO continues to be the destabilisation of Central Asia caused by the export of militant organisations from Afghan territory, even at the expense of oversimplifying a complicated security dilemma. Although the formation of the SCO-Afghanistan Contact group in 2018 was a good step, ongoing dialogue with the Taliban is essential for a lasting solution that can only be achieved with a more integrative strategy on a sustained basis.

The SCO offers an institutional setting for contact with Central Asian nations for India, which does not share borders with them, and gives momentum to its “Connect Central Asia” Policy. India’s maritime cooperation with the USA, Japan, and Australia is balanced by the continent’s participation in the SCO.

In a nutshell, each SCO member and observer country has both congruent and divergent objectives. While incompatibility results from political disputes, complementary interests are typically tied to economic and security considerations.  The scope of SCO rivals has not decreased despite the SCO’s growth and increasing status. Indeed, it has been argued that the SCO has taken on the function of a restraining mechanism, allowing China to prevent Indian contact with the Central Asian region. While the SCO multilateral collaboration has been successful in promoting economic growth, security and regional stability, and humanitarian cooperation, geopolitical factors like the interaction of India, Russia, or growing Chinese dominance have limited the organization’s potential.