The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) provides a vital diplomatic platform for member nations to resolve conflicts through consensus, while driving regional connectivity and advancing sustainable development.
\nThese views were highlighted at a joint seminar on Tuesday titled \u201cSCO at 25: The Shanghai Spirit and a New Journey with Islamabad.\u201d Featuring federal ministers, senators, ambassadors and leading experts, the discussion focused on the organization\u2019s progress, the Shanghai Spirit and Pakistan\u2019s upcoming role as SCO chair.<\/p>\n
The Seminar was organized by the China Program of the Institute of Regional Studies (IRS) and the China Media Group (CMG).
\nMinister and Chairman of the Board of Investment Qaiser Ahmed Sheikh, graced the occasion as Chief Guest. Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, Chairman of the Pakistan-China Institute, delivered the keynote address, and Ms. Zhuang Xinyan, Counselor at the Embassy of the People\u2019s Republic of China, delivered special remarks. Ambassador Jauhar Saleem, President IRS, delivered welcoming remarks and addressed the gathering. The Seminar was moderated by Ms. Nabila Jaffer, Senior Research Analyst and Head of the China Program, IRS.
\nIn his welcome remarks, Ambassador Jauhar Saleem said twenty-five was \u201ca good age to be, not too young, with a lot of energy and dynamism\u201d. He said, the SCO spans 36 million square kilometres and 3.4 billion people, it had come that far, he said, \u201cwithout a treaty of alliance, a standing army, or a single dominant vote\u201d.
\nHe said that I have spent my working life \u201cin rooms where such formulations are drafted\u201d, and most did not survive, \u201cbut this one has, and not only has it survived, it has prospered\u201d, because the Shanghai Spirit does not ask member states to resemble one another.
\nMr. Qaiser Ahmed Sheikh said the SCO had begun as a confidence-building measure and now covered security, business, the economy and people-to-people contact, and comprises 25 per cent of its economy. He said all this became possible due to the Chinese way of consensus building. With Afghanistan, India and Pakistan all members, he said, the platform gave the region an opportunity to sit together and find resolutions. Recalling some fifty to sixty visits to China since 1972, he pointed to its early emphasis on education and the lifting of 800 million out of poverty. \u201cHow they did it, we have to study that,\u201d he said and urged that consensus-building be taught in educational institutions in specific and the country as a whole.
\nSenator Mushahid Hussain Sayed said that SCO gave the Global South \u201ca strategic option\u201d as opposed to alliances based on militarism, let landlocked Central Asian states become \u201cland-linked\u201d through Gwadar, and stood as \u201cthe institutional voice of the Asian century\u201d.
\nMs. Zhuang Xinyan, counselor at China Embassy in Islamabad, said China as a founding member had \u201cforged a new path of regional cooperation\u201d, with seven cooperation platforms generating over 160 projects. Calling the chairmanship \u201ca major event for the SCO family and a significant milestone in Pakistan\u2019s diplomacy\u201d, she proposed upholding the Shanghai Spirit, sustaining security cooperation, pursuing development under a high-quality Belt and Road Initiative and upholding true multilateralism. China, she said, stood ready as an iron brother to fully support Pakistan\u2019s chairmanship.
\nAmbassador Naela Chohan called the Shanghai Spirit \u201ca beautiful spirit of friendship\u201d and traced the SCO\u2019s growth from a border security mechanism into a Eurasian platform of ten members. Recalling Pakistan\u2019s path from observer in 2005 to full member in 2017, she said integrating CPEC with SCO transit routes would make \u201cthe new journey with Islamabad positive, fruitful and progressive\u201d.
\nDr. Shafqat Munir Ahmad from SDPI said the founding agenda of confidence and institution building had served its purpose, and that \u201cnow is the time for delivery\u201d. He urged Pakistan to use the chairmanship to advance separate technical tracks on counter-terrorism and on water and climate, and to widen security to cover energy, food, water and climate. Adding to this, Mr. Muhammad Ramzan Ali from PTV said the decline of the West had proved the worth of regional groupings such as the SCO and BRICS, which would \u201copen some new vistas of connectivity, cooperation\u201d and represented a win-win situation for the Global South. In this changing transformation, he said, countries such as Pakistan, Turkey and Iran had massive opportunities.
\nDr. Usman Chohan from IRS, in concluding remarks, said the world now offered a choice between competing logics of security, and endorsed the Shanghai Spirit \u201cas the human spirit\u201d. Mr. Tasawar Zaman Babar of CGTN Urdu presented the vote of thanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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