What the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation promised, and how far each promise actually travelled.
Version 1.0Compiled 21 August 2026Next update within 48 hours of the Bishkek declaration
23Commitments tracked
2Reached operating
15Never funded
16Years, bank unbuilt
5Years group dormant
Every SCO summit produces a declaration containing commitments. Very little published work records what happened to them afterwards. This tracker does that, and only that.
Each commitment is coded on a single question: how far did it travel between being announced and being operational. The distinction matters because the organisation's institutional record is one of announced structures that do not acquire budgets, and that pattern is invisible if each declaration is read on its own.
This is not a criticism. Consensus bodies with ten members move slowly by design, and slow is not the same as failed. But the difference between a body that has been named and a body with a chairing state, a budget line and a meeting calendar is the difference between a communiqué and a capability, and readers are entitled to know which they are looking at.
How to Read the Ladder
DECLARED
AGREED
ESTABLISHED
FUNDED
OPERATING
Five filled rungs means staffed, meeting on a schedule and producing output. One rung means named in a declaration and nothing more. A hatched rung marks a commitment that exists but is blocked or dormant. Commitments can and do sit at one stage for years, and the years column records how long.
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SCO Development Bank
Proposed 2010 · China
Astana 2024 recorded only "continuing consultations on the establishment". At Tianjin 2025 all ten members approved proceeding and Xi Jinping urged launching it "as soon as possible", after which the proposal went to experts for conceptual elaboration. Kyrgyzstan intends to launch it during its 2026 chairmanship, naming hydropower, transport and digital as priorities. Charter structure, capital allocation and share distribution remain undefined.
Declared
16 years at stage
SCO Development Fund, Special Account
Proposed 2010
Tracked alongside the Bank in successive declarations. Astana 2024 again recorded consultations continuing. No separate progress has been recorded.
Declared
16 years at stage
Local currency settlement roadmap
Pre-2024
Astana 2024 reaffirmed the existing roadmap without a new decision. The de-dollarisation discussion continues to be carried in declaratory language rather than in a settlement mechanism with participating institutions named.
Declared
2 years since reaffirmed
SCO Interbank Consortium
Established 2005
Functions as a coordination body between member state banks rather than as a lending institution in its own right. At Tianjin 2025 China pledged CNY 10 billion, about USD 1.4 billion, in loans to consortium member banks over three years.
Operating
21 years
Chinese grants to member states
Pledged Tianjin 2025
CNY 2 billion, about USD 280.1 million, for 2025. This is a Chinese bilateral instrument routed through the organisation, not SCO institutional capital, and should not be read as evidence that the SCO itself has acquired a financing capability.
Funded
Single year pledge
SCO Association of Investors
Astana 2024
Regulations approved. No reported seat, membership roster or activity since.
Agreed
2 years at stage
Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS)
Established 2004 · Tashkent
A functioning permanent body with a seat, staff, an intelligence-sharing remit and a standing conference programme. The organisation's one unambiguous institutional success, and the benchmark against which every later body should be judged.
Operating
22 years
Universal Centre for Countering Challenges and Threats
Agreement signed Tianjin, September 2025
Member states signed the Agreement establishing the centre. No seat, funding allocation, staffing or implementation timeline has been reported since. Presented in coverage as a signed accord rather than an operating entity.
Agreed
1 year at stage
Centre on transnational organised crime
Approved Tianjin 2025
One of four centres approved at a single summit. No reported seat, budget or staff.
Agreed
1 year at stage
Centre on information security
Approved Tianjin 2025
No reported seat, budget or staff. Sits alongside the information security cooperation plan agreed by foreign ministers at Cholpon-Ata in July 2026.
Agreed
1 year at stage
Anti-drug centre
Approved Tianjin 2025
Follows the Counter-Narcotics Strategy agreed a year earlier at Astana. No reported seat, budget or staff.
Agreed
1 year at stage
Programme against terrorism, separatism and extremism, 2025 to 2027
Approved Astana 2024
Document approved. Implementation runs through RATS, which gives it a better delivery route than the bodies created in 2025.
Agreed
2 years at stage
Counter-Narcotics Strategy 2024 to 2029, with action programme
Approved Astana 2024
Strategy and action programme both approved. The anti-drug centre approved at Tianjin a year later is the implementing body, and it has not been stood up.
Agreed
2 years at stage
Secretariat link to the Central Asia Regional Information Coordination Centre
Astana 2024
Memorandum agreed establishing interaction between the SCO Secretariat and CARICC. No reported joint activity since.
Agreed
2 years at stage
SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group
Established 2005 · dormant since 2021
Consultations restarted in Dushanbe on Tajik initiative after a four-year gap. On 6 June 2026 at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, SCO Deputy Secretary-General Ahmad Saeed Moradzadeh said revival was being explored and that the Secretariat hoped the issue would appear in the Bishkek declaration. No chairing state has been named.
Established, dormant
5 years dormant
Afghanistan's seat at the SCO
Observer status held from 2012 · vacant since August 2021
The status was never formally revoked; it lapsed into vacancy, which is the organisation's characteristic method for handling a question it cannot resolve by consensus. On 24 June 2026 Zamir Kabulov, the Russian president's special envoy for Afghanistan, told Izvestia that the obstacle to Taliban participation is the explicit opposition of a single member state. He did not name it.
Blocked
5 years vacant
India and Pakistan accede as full members
2017
Completed. The accession also imported the India-Pakistan dispute into the consensus rule, which has since shaped what the organisation can say about terrorism.
Completed
9 years
Iran accedes as a full member
2023
Completed.
Completed
3 years
Belarus accedes as a full member
2024
Completed.
Completed
2 years
Laos admitted as dialogue partner
Tianjin 2025
Completed.
Completed
1 year
Consolidation of observer and dialogue partner categories
Reported for Tianjin 2025 · disputed
Secondary sources conflict. Analysis published by the Observer Research Foundation states that Tianjin merged the observer and dialogue partner statuses into one "SCO partner" designation covering Mongolia, Afghanistan and fifteen dialogue partners. The Astana Times summary of the same summit reports no change to partnership designations. Not yet resolved against the declaration text, and flagged here rather than asserted. If the consolidation is real it materially changes how Afghanistan's status should be described.
Unverified
Needs primary text
SCO Development Strategy to 2035
Adopted Tianjin 2025
Adopted as a document. Implementation instruments are the bodies listed above, most of which have not been stood up.
Agreed
1 year at stage
Energy Cooperation Strategy to 2030
Approved Astana 2024
Approved as a document. No dedicated implementing body identified.
Agreed
2 years at stage
What the Register Shows
Intent converts to agreements efficiently, agreements to institutions rarely
Assessed with high confidence
Of the bodies catalogued here, two reached operating status: RATS in 2004 and the Interbank Consortium in 2005. Every institution created since sits at agreed or below. The organisation is not short of legal instruments. It is short of secretariats, budget lines and staff.
Security commitments travel further than financial ones
Assessed with high confidence
Security instruments get signed. Financial institutions get consultations continued. Four security centres were approved in a single afternoon at Tianjin, while the Development Bank has been under discussion for sixteen years without a capital figure. The asymmetry is consistent across every summit in the register.
The binding constraint is that nobody has to pay
Assessed with moderate confidence
Signing an agreement costs a member nothing. Subscribing capital, hosting a secretariat or seconding staff costs something specific, and that is precisely where the record thins. The Kyrgyz chairmanship's stated intention to launch the Development Bank during 2026 is the clearest test of this proposition in years, because it requires someone to put a number on the table.
Test for Bishkek, 1 September 2026
Recorded in advance so the tracker can be judged on it rather than revised after the fact.
What IPDS expects
We assess it as likely that the Bishkek declaration contains language on reactivating the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group, and likely that it records further progress on the Development Bank without a capital subscription schedule.
Four things will decide whether any entry above moves a stage. The tracker will be updated within 48 hours of the declaration.
Whether any state is named as chairing the Afghanistan Contact Group
Whether the Development Bank acquires a charter, a capital figure or a share distribution
Whether any of the four centres approved at Tianjin acquires a seat or a budget line
Whether an Afghan delegation appears at Bishkek in any format, including side events
If none of the four occurs, no entry moves, and that is itself the finding.
Method and Limits
Compiled from SCO Secretariat publications, summit declaration texts, and secondary analysis where primary text was unavailable. Where a claim rests on state-aligned media of a party to the issue, it is marked as that actor's claim in the entry.
Version 1.0 has four known limits, stated plainly because a tracker that hides its gaps is worth less than one that names them.
Limit
Effect
Fix
Coverage weighted to Astana 2024 and Tianjin 2025
Dushanbe 2021, Samarkand 2022 and New Delhi 2023 are thinly coded
Back-code in v1.1
Several entries rest on secondary summaries
Declaration language may differ from how it is reported
Read each declaration in full, and in Russian and Chinese
The SCO does not publish budget data
Funded status is inferred from public pledges, not accounts
No open fix; flagged permanently
Partner category question unresolved
Affects how Afghanistan's status is described
Check the Tianjin declaration text directly
Sources
SCO Secretariat, Astana Declaration of the Council of Heads of State, 4 July 2024. eng.sectsco.org
SCO Secretariat, Council of National Coordinators regular meeting, 6 August 2026. eng.sectsco.org
SCO Secretariat, Council of National Coordinators meeting in Osh, 16 March 2026. eng.sectsco.org
SCO Secretariat, Priorities of Kyrgyzstan's chairmanship 2025 to 2026, 23 October 2025. eng.sectsco.org
TASS, SCO members agree on universal centre for countering challenges and threats, September 2025. tass.com
The Astana Times, Key takeaways from the SCO's largest ever summit in Tianjin, September 2025. astanatimes.com
Eurasianet, Shanghai Cooperation Organization takes steps to open financing arm. eurasianet.org
Observer Research Foundation, Tianjin SCO Summit 2025: key takeaways and emerging trends. orfonline.org
Afghanistan International, Single SCO member is preventing Taliban inclusion, says Russian envoy, 24 June 2026. afintl.com