What SCO is and how it works

The border came before the organisation

The Agreement on Confidence Building in the Military Field in the Border Area was signed on 26 April 1996 by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan. Its provisions are border provisions: notification when the parties hold exercises near the line, reduction of troop levels in the border areas, and observation of each other's troop movements by invitation. A second agreement, on mutual reductions of armed forces in the border area, followed on 24 April 1997, and the Charter's preamble cites both by date.

Every one of the four post-Soviet signatories records China as a land neighbour. Uzbekistan does not, and Uzbekistan is the member that came in at the next step. The Declaration on the Establishment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation was signed on 15 June 2001, and the Uzbek record dates its membership to that day where the other founders date theirs to 26 April 1996.

What the Charter fixed in place

The Charter was concluded at Saint Petersburg on 7 June 2002 and registered with the Secretariat of the United Nations under number 50517. It entered into force on 19 September 2003, thirty days after the fourth instrument of ratification reached the depositary, which under Article 25 is the Government of China. China ratified on 25 November 2002, Russia on 17 July 2003, Tajikistan on 1 August 2003 and Kazakhstan on 21 August 2003. Kyrgyzstan deposited on 10 October 2003 and Uzbekistan on 29 April 2004, and for those two the Charter took effect on the day of deposit rather than on the common date.

Article 20 makes Russian and Chinese the official and working languages, and the instrument itself was done in a single original in those two languages, both texts equally authentic. Article 11 places the Secretariat at Beijing and rotates the post of Secretary-General among nationals of the member states in the Russian alphabetical order of their names, for three years, with no second term. Article 18 makes each member's permanent representative part of the diplomatic staff of its embassy in Beijing. Article 10 places the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure at Tashkent. The Astana Declaration of 4 July 2024 marks the twentieth anniversary of both the Beijing Secretariat and the Tashkent executive committee.

Article 22 settles disputes over the Charter's interpretation through consultations and negotiations. There is no court, and no organ that can rule on a member.

How a state joins, and what the lesser statuses are

Article 21 opens the Charter, once in force, to accession by any state, with no geographical qualification of any kind. For an acceding state it enters into force on the thirtieth day after the depositary receives the instrument. Ahead of that a candidate signs a memorandum of obligations, and the declarations record each stage. The Astana Declaration of 9 June 2017 notes that India and Pakistan fulfilled memorandums dated 2016, and that the Council of Heads of State granted both member status. The New Delhi Declaration of 4 July 2023 records the admission of Iran as a full member state and, in the same paragraph, the signing of a memorandum of obligations by Belarus. The Astana Declaration of 4 July 2024 records the accession of Belarus.

Article 14 provides for two lesser statuses, observer and dialogue partner. The Regulation on the Status of Observer, adopted at Tashkent on 17 June 2004, lets an observer attend public meetings, circulate written statements through the Executive Secretary and read the decisions of the bodies named in Article 4. It also states that observer status carries no right to take part in preparing or signing the organisation's documents. The organisation holds observer status of its own at the United Nations General Assembly, granted by resolution 59/48 on 2 December 2004 and adopted without a vote.

Consensus, and what it puts on the record

Article 16 is the operative rule. Decisions are taken by agreement without a vote and count as adopted if no member state raised an objection while they were considered. The single exception runs the other way: suspension or expulsion under Article 13 is decided by consensus minus the vote of the state concerned. Article 16 also lets a member state place its opinion on particular points on the record without that blocking the decision as a whole, and lets a state uninterested in a project stand aside without stopping the others from carrying it out.

The summit declarations show the arrangement in use. In the New Delhi text of 4 July 2023 the paragraph supporting China's Belt and Road Initiative is attributed by name to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In the Astana text of 4 July 2024 the same paragraph names Belarus, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. India is absent from the attribution in both, and in both the declaration issues as one document.

What the grouping is not

Article 21 makes the Charter open to any state, so the membership is not a region and cannot be read off a map. The members' other affiliations do not line up either. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan carry membership of the Collective Security Treaty Organization on their records, which China, India, Pakistan and Uzbekistan do not. India and Pakistan both sit in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. China and Russia both sit in Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation.

Article 2 sets out what the members undertake towards each other: mutual respect for sovereignty and the inviolability of state borders, non-interference in internal affairs, no use or threat of force, and no seeking of unilateral military superiority in adjacent areas. The same article states that the organisation is not directed against other states or international organisations. Article 1 lists the joint task in the formula the documents repeat, combating terrorism, separatism and extremism, and it is that formula, rather than a shared border or a shared language, that the later accessions signed up to.