SCO Observatory

The organisation at a glance

Founding chronology

The organisation did not begin in 2001. It began as a border demarcation mechanism between five states in 1996, and its institutional habits were formed there.

Council of Heads of State

Every summit from Shanghai in 2001 to Bishkek in 2026. The numbering runs one higher than the year minus 2000, following the SCO Secretariat and the contemporaneous statements of member state foreign ministries.

Council of Heads of Government

The prime ministers meet on their own rotation, independent of the summit chairmanship, and approve the budget. This series is far less documented in English than the summits, which is precisely why it is carried here in full.

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The SCO Secretariat's own summary table omits the twenty third meeting, held in Islamabad in October 2024, which the Secretariat separately documents in a joint communiqué. It is restored here.

Declaration texts and sources

A register of primary-source links for all twenty six Heads of State declarations, for readers who need the document itself rather than this database's account of it. This database does not reproduce full declaration texts inline: several are not publicly available in English at all (noted below), full reproduction would make this page unusably long, and reproducing large blocks of another body's official text is not something this Centre does as a matter of practice.

Each row links first to the SCO Secretariat's own site, wherever a stable link to it could be confirmed, since that is the organisation's own record of what it adopted. A second column adds the host or a founding member state's Ministry of Foreign Affairs where one was found publishing the same document, so a claim can be checked against both the organisation and a national government independently. Where no Secretariat link could be confirmed, the strongest available alternative is used and labelled as such; this happens for four of the twenty six.

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One entry above surfaced an open question this database had not previously resolved: a possible declaration for the St Petersburg 2002 meeting, which the Overview and Method sections currently record as having none located. This has not been used to silently change that existing entry; it needs a second source-check first, in keeping with the method used throughout this database.

The ten members compared

One consistent source per column, with the year of the figure stated. Bars are drawn to the largest value in each column, so they compare within a column and never across.

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Budget shares are set by a protocol signed at the Islamabad Heads of Government meeting in October 2024 and applied from 1 January 2025. Land area from Worldometer, accessed September 2026; population from UN World Population Prospects 2024, 2026 projection; GDP from the IMF World Economic Outlook of April 2026, 2025 estimates. Area figures for India and Pakistan differ between publishers according to the treatment of disputed territory. This database uses one source consistently and takes no position on that dispute.

Country dossiers

Click any member to open its full record. Positions are drawn from official statements and, where a claim is contested, both accounts are given.

Compare members side by side

Pick two to four states to see their dossiers side by side, pulled directly from the Country dossiers above — nothing here is a separate copy of the data.

Every SCO body

Ranked on the IPDS commitment ladder: declared, agreed, established, funded, operating. A stage is never inferred upward. A body that was approved is agreed, not established, until a seat is reported, and no body here has reached funded on the basis of a published budget line.

Secretaries General

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Three year terms rotating by nationality. India, Pakistan, Iran and Belarus have not yet entered the rotation, which means no member admitted since 2017 has held the post.

Directors of the RATS Executive Committee

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Trade and financing, in scale

Numbers to read the Interbank Consortium and Business Council entries above against. As with the country dossiers, bilateral pledges are marked as such and are not counted as institutional capital.

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Intra-SCO and China trade figures from CGTN reporting on SCO Secretariat and Chinese customs data. China Development Bank and 2006 figures are historical baselines, not current totals; no single consolidated current total for all ten members' intra-SCO trade was located.

The three agreements this rests on

Culture, education and media cooperation under the SCO are not run from a single treaty the way counter-terrorism runs from the Shanghai Convention. They rest on three separate intergovernmental agreements, signed years apart, plus a set of institutions and recurring events layered on top.

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SCO University

Already covered as an institution, in Institutions: concept proposed by President Putin at Bishkek 2007, establishing agreement signed 6 September 2017 in Astana, and placed at operating. What follows is the scale and shape of it, not a repeat of its founding record.

Media and think tank cooperation

Distinct from the Consortium of Economic Analytical Centres in Institutions, which is a standing network with regulations adopted in 2019. What follows are recurring events rather than seated institutions.

Tourism and cultural capital

The annual SCO Tourism and Cultural Capital rotation, and the trade and hospitality angle on it, is covered in Trade and business opportunities to avoid saying it twice. In short: Varanasi, Almaty, Qingdao and Cholpon-Ata have held the title in turn since 2022; Lahore holds it for 2026 to 2027. See Trade and business opportunities →

Sport: mostly proposed, not yet built

Worth stating plainly: there is no operating SCO sports institution or regular SCO-wide games. What exists is one proposal and two small, one-off national initiatives.

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What this section does not establish

• The 128 versus 113 discrepancy in SCO University's own reported university count is unresolved here, not silently corrected.
• Whether the SCO Media and Analytical Centres Summit and the SCO Think Tank Forum operate on a fixed annual calendar, or convene ad hoc under each chairmanship, was not established.
• The Agreement on Cooperation in Protecting Cultural Landmarks rests on secondary reporting only; a primary text was not located during this research.
• Student mobility numbers, scholarship counts and any budget figures for education or cultural cooperation were not found and are not estimated here.

Environment and climate

The newest thread in SCO cooperation, and the thinnest: one summit-level statement, one recurring but junior-level ministerial meeting, and one agreement still being drafted rather than signed. Read alongside this, not instead of it: the Aral Sea and glacier issues that dominate regional environmental discussion are mostly carried by other bodies, not the SCO itself.

What is regional, but is not an SCO project

Two of Central Asia's highest-profile environmental issues touch SCO member states directly. Neither is run by the SCO.

What this section does not establish

• No consolidated list of all Meetings of Heads of Ministries and Agencies for Environmental Protection was found; only that the most recent was the seventh, in Bishkek.
• The content of the draft cooperation agreement on combating climate change, and any timeline for signature, was not found.
• No budget, emissions target or funding figure attached to any SCO climate or environmental statement was found; this database does not estimate one.
• This section should not be read as suggesting the SCO leads on Aral Sea or glacier issues. It does not; both sit primarily with other institutions, named above.

Trade and business opportunities

This section is for a different reader than most of this database: a chamber of commerce, a trading firm or an investor deciding where to look, not a diplomat or researcher tracking the organisation itself. It sets out where preferential access already exists, where it does not, concrete zones with live incentives, and recurring points of contact — alongside the trade the region's own tensions are still leaving on the table.

Where market access is already easier

Before treating the whole SCO as one market, it is worth knowing it is not one. These are the preferential and cooperation arrangements this research could confirm among member states, and where none exists.

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The financial architecture, in one place

For a chamber of commerce or an investor asking 'is there an SCO bank I can actually use': the honest answer is one working consortium of national banks, and three bodies that exist mostly on paper. This table exists so the answer is in one place rather than scattered across three sections; the full record for each remains in Institutions.

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Trade the region is leaving on the table

Two relationships inside the SCO's own membership, and one border it touches but does not include, carry the clearest documented gap between potential and actual trade — and, read the other way, the clearest upside if the barriers move.

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Free zones and special economic zones

Concrete, investable locations rather than country-wide market access. Tax and incentive details change; verify current terms with the zone authority before committing capital — these are a starting point for due diligence, not a substitute for it.

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Where to show up

Recurring, concrete points of contact rather than a standing SCO trade bureaucracy — the organisation itself runs no single trade fair or investment desk.

What this section does not establish

• This is not investment advice, and nothing here should be read as a recommendation to enter any market, zone or agreement listed. Tax and tariff terms change; verify current terms with the relevant national authority before acting on anything above.
• No single, confirmed route to SCO Business Council membership was found. The national-chapter route described is inferred from how Pakistan's chapter operates, not confirmed as the mechanism for all ten members.
• The market access table lists what was confirmed during this research, not necessarily every arrangement that exists. Absence from the table is not evidence an arrangement does not exist.
• For the physical routes and corridors this trade would move on, see Connectivity projects. For the macro trade figures these opportunities sit against, see Trade and financing in Institutions.

Connectivity projects across the SCO space

Every major transport and energy corridor touching the SCO space, in one register: route, participants, status and what it would mean once built. With one exception, noted in the table, none of the following are SCO institutional projects. They are bilateral or plurilateral undertakings among states that are mostly, but not entirely, SCO members or observers — Afghanistan appears in four of the nine despite currently holding no SCO status, and the Middle Corridor runs through three states that are not SCO members at all. Costs are cumulative or estimated figures from the sources cited, not verified project accounts, and are marked where a reliable figure was not found.

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What this section does not establish

• Cost figures above are the best cumulative or estimated totals found per project, drawn from a mix of government, multilateral and trade-press sources of varying reliability. None should be read as an audited project account, and several are marked as not confirmed.
• Status labels describe the position at the time of research and can move quickly on projects with a record of stalling and restarting, TAPI and Line D in particular.
• This is not an appraisal of whether any of these projects should be built. It sets out route, participants and status as reported, and nothing here should be read as this Centre's view on the merits of any project or route choice.
• Only the SCO Transport Connectivity Strategy to 2035 is a proposal from the organisation itself. Treating the rest as SCO projects, rather than projects among states that happen to include SCO members, would misstate what the SCO has actually done, in the same way this database avoids counting bilateral pledges as SCO funding elsewhere.
• For what these corridors would mean commercially — existing preferential access, free zones, and where to make contact — see Trade and business opportunities.

How security cooperation actually works, in practice

Security cooperation, and counter-terrorism work through RATS in particular, was one of the SCO's founding purposes and remains its most concrete practical achievement. This section looks at what RATS and the newer security bodies have reported doing, in their own words and figures, alongside what is still too new to have a track record yet.

Joint counter-terrorism exercises

RATS says these exercises have taken place every year since 2006, giving member states' security services a regular way to train and share experience together. A complete public list of every year's exercise was not found; the table below covers the two most recently confirmed editions and will be extended as further ones are verified.

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What the SCO has said about Afghanistan

Afghanistan's observer seat has been vacant since August 2021, as covered in Partners and relations. Here is what member states have said about the country together, most recently at Bishkek, in their own words rather than the Centre's characterisation.

The Anti-Drug Centre, a step on from Institutions

Cross-referenced with Institutions, where this body is listed as established.

What this section does not cover

• No comprehensive, RATS-sourced statistical report was located for 2025 or 2026. The operational figures above rest on a single 2024 leadership interview and a secondary UN Chronicle citation for 2011 to 2015 — useful reference points, not an ongoing published series.
• No consolidated list of every joint exercise since the series began in 2006 was located. The exercise table above will be extended as further primary sources are found.
• Whether the Universal Centre for Countering Challenges and Threats or the Anti-Drug Centre has begun any casework cannot yet be assessed, pending a reported director, budget or case record.
• This section sets out what SCO bodies and declarations say about security cooperation and Afghanistan. It is not an independent threat assessment, and takes no position on any member state's characterisation of any other state, group or territory.

How decisions are actually taken

The machinery, its legal basis and how often each part of it meets. Most published commentary on this organisation looks only at the annual summit, which is the one part of the system that decides least.

Where member states actually disagree

The consensus rule above describes how disagreement is handled procedurally. This is what it looks like in practice, on two live questions where individual member states have taken visibly different positions rather than a single organisational line. Both are snapshots, not standing trackers, and will go stale as positions move.

Where would the SCO Development Bank be based?

Proposed in 2010, politically agreed in principle at Tianjin 2025, and still listed as 'declared' in Institutions sixteen years on. The one open question with two named bidders.

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How far has each member gone toward engaging the Taliban government?

Ordered roughly by degree of engagement, from formal recognition to open conflict. See Security cooperation for what the SCO's own declarations say about Afghanistan collectively; this table is about individual member states' own conduct, not the organisation's.

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Sectoral ministerial meetings

Ministries that meet under SCO auspices. Frequency is generally annual by practice rather than by any codified rule.

The budget

Approved by the Council of Heads of Government. The organisation has never published an absolute budget figure in any currency. Only the percentage contribution shares are public, set by a protocol signed at Islamabad in October 2024 and applied from 1 January 2025. The 2026 budget was approved in Moscow in November 2025 with no figure disclosed.

Observer states

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Dialogue partners

Fifteen states, verified against the Secretariat's own list with its decision numbers. Libya appears as a dialogue partner in some widely used reference sources. It is on no official list and is not included here.

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Relations with other organisations

Thirteen instruments with UN bodies, regional organisations and functional agencies. The table below is the citable record; the diagram is a reading aid for the same data.

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How to cite this database

This is version-controlled research output. Please cite the version and date shown above, since the content is refined over time as gaps are closed and corrections come in.

Each section has a stable address: moving between sections updates the link in your address bar (for example, .../sco-observatory/#security), so a specific section can be linked or bookmarked directly. Major headings within a section carry their own anchor ids in the page source, for citations that need more precision than a whole section.

The tables on this page are also available as a structured download, for readers who want to work with the data directly rather than cite the page. Download the structured dataset (JSON, version 2.6) → Narrative entries, such as summit-by-summit declaration text and country dossier notes, are not yet in the structured export; the tabular data (summits, members, institutions, office holders, partners, security record) is.

Method

Three rules govern this database, and they are the reason it can be cited.

A stage is never inferred upward. A body that was approved is agreed, not established, until a seat is reported. Absence of evidence for a seat is treated as evidence it does not have one, because states publicise these things.

Bilateral money is not institutional money. A Chinese or Russian pledge announced at a summit is a bilateral instrument, not SCO capital, unless the document says otherwise. Coding it as SCO funding would be the single easiest way to make this database wrong and useless.

Contested claims are marked, not resolved. Where sources conflict, both accounts are given, with the identity of who is claiming what. Where a party to a dispute is the only source for a claim about another party, that is stated.

Sources are the SCO Secretariat's English and Russian sites, primary declaration texts including in the original Chinese and Russian, national government publications, and established secondary analysis. Where a claim rests on state-aligned media of a party to the issue, the entry says so rather than reporting it as fact.

What this database does not establish

Every reference work has gaps. Most do not print them. These are ours, and each one is an invitation: if you can close one, the Centre would like to hear from you.

• The complete English and Russian texts of the Bishkek Declaration were not obtained. Coding rests on the Chinese full text and on converging extracts. Fix by requesting the Secretariat texts.
• No official enumeration of the twenty eight Bishkek documents was published. One Russian outlet reported twenty nine.
• Ratification records were found for two members only, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan. Entry into force cannot be assessed for either 2025 security agreement. To be populated from the ten national gazettes.
• The SCO publishes no absolute budget figure in any currency. Only the percentage contribution shares are public.
• The date the SCO Plus format was formally introduced could not be established from any primary document.
• Substantive outcomes are documented for only two of the twenty four Heads of Government meetings. The other communiqués have not yet been read.
• No Council of Heads of Government meeting was found for 2002, which is plausible given the Charter was signed that June, but no source states that none was held.
• Founding dates for the SCO Forum think tank network and for the SCO Women's Forum could not be established.
• Land area figures use one third party source consistently. Figures for India and Pakistan differ between publishers according to the treatment of disputed territory. This database takes no position on that dispute and does not adjudicate it.
• The report that the 2026 Charter protocol adds English as a working language is carried by Indian outlets and by one secondary account. Charter Article 20 currently provides for Russian and Chinese. Pending sight of the protocol text.

Sources

• SCO Secretariat, English and Russian sites, eng.sectsco.org and rus.sectsco.org
• Bishkek Declaration, full Chinese text, Xinhua, 1 September 2026
• Tianjin Declaration, Russian text, SCO Secretariat, 1 September 2025
• SCO Charter, 7 June 2002, Articles 5 to 9, 16 and 20
• Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure, ecrats.org
• IMF World Economic Outlook, April 2026
• UN World Population Prospects, 2024 revision
• The Astana Times, on the October 2024 budget contribution protocol
• Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on the 23rd Heads of Government meeting
• Indian Ministry of External Affairs briefs on accession
• Times of Central Asia, on the Bishkek summit outcomes
• National ratification reporting from Belarus and Kyrgyzstan

This database is revised as gaps are closed and events occur. Subscribe to update notices (RSS) → Each substantive revision is logged there when it happens, in place of a fixed publishing schedule.

Glossary

Terms used throughout this database without re-explanation each time they appear.

RATS

Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure, the SCO's Tashkent-based counter-terrorism body. See Institutions and Security cooperation.

SCO Plus

The expanded outreach session held alongside the annual summit, bringing in observers, dialogue partners and guests of the chair. See How it works.

Consensus rule

Charter Article 16: decisions are adopted when no member state objects, except suspension or expulsion, decided by consensus minus the state concerned. See How it works.

Commitment ladder

This database's own coding scale for institutions: declared, agreed, established, funded, operating, in that order, never inferred upward. See Institutions.

Observer state

A status senior to dialogue partner, carrying a right to speak at Council of Heads of State sessions. Two states hold it; see Partners and relations.

Dialogue partner

A status junior to observer, established as a category in 2008. Fifteen states hold it.

CSTO

Collective Security Treaty Organisation, a separate Moscow-based defence alliance among some SCO members. Not to be confused with the SCO or with RATS.

EAEU

Eurasian Economic Union, a separate customs union among some SCO members, linked to the SCO by a 2021 memorandum.

CIS

Commonwealth of Independent States, the post-Soviet grouping that granted the SCO observer status in October 2025.

ECO

Economic Cooperation Organisation, a separate regional bloc linked to the SCO by a 2007 memorandum.

CICA

Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia, linked to the SCO by a 2014 memorandum.

RATS Council vs Executive Committee

The Council is the decision-making body above RATS; the Executive Committee, in Tashkent, is the standing staff that carries decisions out.