Courtesy: India Today
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation's growing importance is seen in the numerous new applicants waiting in line for membership. The 23rd SCO Summit hosted by India on July 4 saw progress in areas like digital transformation and economic cooperation. However, timidity in acting on foundational issues like anti-terrorism reflects the internal contradictions and tensions within member states - a continuing challenge for SCO.
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India’s year-long G20 Presidency completed six months at a time of global economic slowdown and sharpening geopolitical contestation. While India has done well in leveraging the Presidency to articulate its vital goals, the success of the upcoming Delhi Summit will depend on achieving consensus, additionality, and implementability.
Courtesy: Swarajya
India, as chair of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, hosted the foreign ministers’ meet in Goa last week. What would have been an important and expanding regional grouping has been complicated by the Russia-Ukraine crisis, the increased influence of China and an obstructionist Pakistan. Still, India has played its role with an eye on the long term.
Courtesy: Mappr
India is rapidly increasing its economic engagement with Russia, and other former Soviet countries. This means it must look at old friends in Central Asia with new eyes. Uzbekistan is one of them. India is one of a quartet of geopolitical powers playing to the strategic interests of this nation which sits at the crossroads of South, East, West and Central Asia and Russia.
Courtesy: Twitter / Hindustan Times
The first Global Buddhist Summit is being held in New Delhi this week, a continuation of India's strategic and diplomatic outreach to Buddhist countries in Asia. The Summit offers India an opportunity to deepen the dialogue on its shared, millennia-old transnational Buddhist legacy with these countries, and arrive at contemporary solutions for global conflicts using the lens of Buddha Dhamma.
Courtesy: Sputnik News
India’s G20 and SCO presidencies have both promise and complexity, for itself and for Moscow. India need not involve itself in crisis settlement, but focus on economic issues, food and energy security, innovation and terrorism. Moscow can help itself by aligning its interests with India’s especially at multilaterals and the global south outreach, and potentially rebuild bridges with the developed north.
Courtesy: Justin Lane/European Pressphoto Agency
The BRICS have largely abstained from the UNSC resolution condemning Russia’s attempts to annex four Ukrainian provinces. Is it BRICS solidarity or is it because the interests of the Global North and its allies, and those of the Global South, are diverging?
Courtesy: Erkin Bolzhurov/World Bank
The SCO climate change initiatives to mitigate soaring temperatures, recurring droughts, and floods, glacial melts, and desiccation of the Aral Sea, are inadequate. Large swathes of Central Asia are hotspots for human migration due to a lack of freshwater resulting in pressure in a few habitable regions.
Courtesy: Iran Press News Agency
The relevance of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation has increased due to the clear divisions developing in the world, since the Ukraine crisis began. Several leaders will probably attend in-person, a chance to advance their regional and economic interests. India has good relations with most SCO countries, and sees the upcoming Summit as a way to secure its strategic and security objectives.
Courtesy: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kazakhstan
The SCO foreign ministers met in Tashkent in July to plan for the all-important SCO summit in September. New additions and old issues remain, but the SCO is now growing into a significant grouping, with importance to India