Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- In 2021, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will be 20 years old as a full-fledged international structure with its own working mechanisms, personnel and budget. The SCO’s activities are of particular importance in terms of combating international terrorism, drug trafficking, as well as in the humanitarian sphere.

The SCO promotes the expansion of scientific, cultural and social contacts between the member countries of the organization. The spirit of mutual respect that dominates the SCO is becoming more and more attractive both for the countries of the Asian region and for states outside of it.

For many years, representatives of Uzbekistan have been leaders in the leadership of the SCO. So at present, the Secretary General of the Organization is the Uzbek statesman Vladimir Imamovich Norov. Such active participation of Uzbekistan in the work of the SCO opens up wide opportunities for it to determine the agenda of the Organization on the widest range of issues.

This is confirmed by the speech at the meeting on 10 November 2020 of the Council of Heads of States of the SCO Member States in the format of a video conference by the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan Shavkat Miromonovich Mirziyoyev, who put forward a number of specific proposals on problems affecting all SCO members without exception.

First of all, attention is drawn to the call of the President of Uzbekistan to carry out practical interaction within the SCO in the field of politics, security, trade and economy, cultural and humanitarian ties - in the interests of overcoming the global and regional consequences of the spread of the new coronavirus infection COVID-19. In this regard, it should be noted that the coronavirus pandemic that has affected all SCO countries has set the Organization’s members the task of adapting to new realities. There was also a need to engage more actively in developing a collective response to the challenges of biological security.

One of the options for such an answer could be a combination, within the framework of a new international center, which would correspond to the level of the SCO RATS, the experience of Russia, which managed to organize effective work to combat COVID-19, with the pharmaceutical achievements of India and the epidemiological results of China.

An important point in the speech of the President of Uzbekistan was the statement that “the threats of terrorism, extremism and drug trafficking are not only not weakening, but are intensifying, acquiring new forms. The role of information technologies, social networks in the recruitment and radicalization of youth, and in the financing of terrorists is growing. "

Therefore, there is a special demand for international cooperation within the SCO, in order to suppress the spread of terrorist and extremist ideology in the information space, to block sources and channels of financing for terrorists and their accomplices, including through proceeds from drug trafficking and other forms of cross-border crime.

In this context, the proposal of Shavkat Mirziyoyev "to significantly increase the frequency of working contacts between competent departments, to develop new mechanisms of interaction."

Particular attention should be paid to the part of the speech of the President of Uzbekistan, which was devoted to Afghanistan - the tasks of its more active involvement in regional trade and economic processes, assistance to the socio-economic reconstruction of Afghanistan within the framework of the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group.

It is worth recalling in this regard that since the early 1990s, Uzbekistan has consistently strengthened economic assistance to Afghanistan, voiced political initiatives to achieve peace in this country, provided its platform for organizing inter-Afghan negotiations between the official leadership of Afghanistan and the Taliban movement.

As you know, the international conference on Afghanistan held in Tashkent in March 2018 was initiated by President Shavkat Mirziyev. The Tashkent Declaration adopted at the end of this conference gave a new impetus to the advancement of intra-Afghan settlement and the achievement of peace and internal political stability in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Therefore, there is no doubt that the important developments of Uzbekistan on the Afghan problem should be taken into account in the SCO when developing and adopting in the near future a Plan of Practical Measures to Promote the Socio-Economic Reconstruction of Afghanistan.

Initiatives on Afghanistan put forward by the President of Uzbekistan at the last SCO summit, on a number of other vital problems for the SCO member states, contribute to improving the overall image of Uzbekistan, its establishment as a major political and economic player in the Central Asian region with a much greater weight in the international arena ...

Malysheva Dina Borisovna, Doctor of Political Sciences, Head of the Sector of Central Asia of the Center for Post-Soviet Studies of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations